Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2016 | Iconic Matt Cline Red Blend
Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2016 delivers delicious, dark ruby red bursting with spice, flavor, and old-vine richness. Wild berry-fruit blends into raspberry, boysenberry, blueberry, wild herbs, and exotic spices. Rich with a creamy mid-palate, fresh acidity, chewy tannins, good length, and a chocolatey finish. As with all of Matt’s wines, finish half the bottle and try it on day two, when it will blossom and reveal more layers of old vine spice and fruit complexity. If there’s any left by day three, it will still impress. Drink now-2024.
More Ridiculously Great Red Gems under $35
Matt’s Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2016 one of the last of its kind in California. Deep ruby to the rim with piercing, high-toned aromas of boysenberry, raspberry, and exotic spices. Zinfandel, Carignane, Petite Sirah, Mourvèdre, and Alicante Bouschet from heritage vineyards planted by first-generation Italians make for a truly opulent wine and a massive attack, showing off all of its century-old-vine pedigree. Don’t let this one sell out on you!
Contra Costa County | Source of the ‘fields’
Fields once covered Contra Costa County, an area today known better for San Francisco’s suburban sprawl. Between the high rises and strip malls, Matt Cline has been working tirelessly to maintain the vineyards that offer a window to the Contra Costa of yore. In these vineyards, there’s no dirt, no gravel, no galets roules. Everything is sand. There are no trellises, rosebushes, or mansion-like tasting rooms.
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Huge, gnarled vines the size of small trees reach up from the sand craning skyward. Notably in shapes that defy modern viticulture, and would make most Napa vineyard managers cringe. Between what passes for rows, the vines are marked Spanish Mataró, Carignan, Zinfandel, and Malvasia Nero. While planted not in blocks devoted to variety but helter-skelter in the traditional “field blend” style pioneered by early farmers across Europe.
Winemaker Matt Cline
A California native, winemaker Matt Cline knew he’d stepped onto vineyard gold when he first began cultivating the ancient vines that pepper Contra Costa County. Standing amidst vines whose trunks reach skyward from soils that look more like beach sand than fertile earth. While curving around themselves in shapes that defy trellising, irrigation, and modern viticulture as we know it. As a result, you feel like you’re standing in a window to the past.
