2008 Caldera

The 2008 Caldera is a gorgeous wine laced with tar, smoke, bacon fat and ash. It shows gorgeous purity and finesse through to the textured finish. Dried flowers, spices, tobacco and game add the final layers of complexity to this exotic, beguiling red. The 2008 Caldera is 65% Mourvèdre, 30% Grenache and 5% Counoise.

The 2008 Caldera is a gorgeous wine laced with tar, smoke, bacon fat and ash. It shows terrific purity and finesse through to the textured finish. Dried flowers, spices, tobacco and game add the final layers of complexity to this exotic, beguiling red. The 2008 Caldera is 65% Mourvedre, 30% Grenache and 5% Counoise. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2016. Helen Keplinger is the winemaker at Bryant, where she now also makes her own wines with her husband, Douglas. Keplinger credits the years she spent working in Priorat as shaping her philosophy on wine and life. These Rhone blends are made from hillside vineyards in Amador County, El Dorado County and Knights Valley. The wines are aged in French oak, 20-65% new, depending on the wine. Racking is kept to a bare minimum and the wines are neither fined nor filtered. Readers owe it to themselves to check out these pure, handcrafted wines. Tel. (707) 252-7417

(65% mourvedre, 30% grenache and 5% counoise): Medium red, a bit less saturated than the 2007. Then cooler and more complex on the nose, offering scents of red cherry, raspberry, lavender, tree bark, minerals, iron and leather; I would have thought I had my nose in a French wine. Silky and floral on entry, then tighter in the middle palate, with lovely integrated acidity to frame the raspberry fruit. Finishes with noteworthy floral persistence. Fruitier than the 2007 today but both wines have plenty of development ahead of them.