Amevive Blanc de Noir of Grenache 2024
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The Land
Blanc de noir usually points to Champagne. This one is Grenache, grown in Santa Barbara County, and it is sparkling, bottle-fermented and hand-disgorged in tiny volume. Âmevive's home is the Ibarra-Young Vineyard in Los Olivos, ten acres first planted in 1971 and farmed organically since 1993, one of the older sites in the Santa Ynez Valley. The Grenache for this cuvée comes off a certified organic block on the northwestern edge of the Alisos Canyon AVA, between the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys. The block is planted entirely to the Alban clone of Grenache and faces west, which is unusual here and means the fruit takes the afternoon heat but also the marine air funneling in through the county's east-west mountain corridor.
The Wine
Grenache goes to press whole and immediately, with no skin contact, so the juice runs out nearly colorless and the finished wine sits somewhere between pale straw and the faintest blush. First fermentation is native-yeast in neutral oak barrels, where the wine then spends a full year with no sulfur added. Rather than dosing with cane sugar for the second fermentation, Alice Anderson blends in a portion of fresh, unfermented juice from the following harvest to restart it in bottle, so the bubbles come entirely from grapes. The wine rests on tirage for roughly two months after going dry, then every bottle is disgorged by hand. Pear blossom, white peach, lemon curd and a kiss of brioche, with a light, dry frame and low alcohol. The 2024 Santa Barbara season followed record winter rain with a cold, damp spring, poor fruit set and historically low yields, and a Labor Day heat spike that stalled ripening rather than hurrying it.
The People
Alice Anderson started in 2015 at Rippon in Central Otago, which she calls the pivotal year, then worked two vintages at Pierre Gaillard in the northern Rhône from 2015 to 2017. Back in California she passed through Tyler and Tribute to Grace before serving as assistant winemaker at Tatomer. She took over farming Ibarra-Young in 2019 and has pushed past organic practice into biodynamic composts and sprays, bringing animals into the vineyard and working to eliminate purchased inputs. In 2024 she added Mira Laguna, an eight-acre site farmed organically since it was planted. Âmevive is one of the clearest cases on the Central Coast that low-intervention winemaking and real farming rigor are the same project, not opposing ones.
Food Pairing
Low in alcohol and bone dry, this is a wine you can drink through a whole meal. Fried chicken, brined and salted hard, is the first thing to try, since the bubbles and acid handle the fat. Oysters on the half shell with lemon play against the chalky side. Grilled sardines with olive oil and sea salt meet the saline, orchard-fruit character. And a plate of jamón with Marcona almonds nods to the grape's Spanish home. With only a handful of cases made, this is the bottle you open with the two or three people who will actually notice.
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Weather shipping advisory: Orders placed during times of extreme heat or extreme cold will be held for no charge until more favorable weather returns.
Grenache is a widely planted grape variety that thrives in its Mediterranean home. In Spain, it's known as Garnacha, where it reaches its peak in the Sierra de Gredos as a pure varietal wine, while also being a key blending component in Rioja. France's Southern Rhône, notably Châteauneuf-du-Pape, is another well-known region, where Grenache is often the base of a blended wine. Grenache also finds a home in Sardinia as Cannonau, and it has spread beyond its Mediterranean origins, most famously to Australia's Barossa Valley. The resulting wines are typically light in color, yet they possess a full body and flavor, displaying mature red fruit notes, herbal spices, and often a hint of orange peel, along with soft tannins and moderate acidity. It is an incredibly versatile grape, showing different expressions based on its terroir and the winemaking style employed.
