The Desert Wine Guy - 2011 St. Amant Tempranillo

2011 St. Amant Tempranillo

   So once again I am back to doing a review of a Tempranillo,  my favorite varietal. Today our review will be on the 2011 St. Amant Tempranillo. The ST AMANT (as it is punctuated on the bottle) Winery (http://www.stamantwine.com/Vineyards/St-Amant-Vineyard) was founded in 1970 in the Jackson Valley of Amador County and is owned by Tim (who has since passed away) and Barbera Spencer. In 1972 the Spencers decided to plant 43 Acres of Zinfandel and was lucky enough to be able to sell those grapes to other wineries such as the now defunct winery JW Morris. The first wine the Winery put out was with grapes actually taken back from the JW Winery. A Vintage Port was made out of those grapes and sold under the St. Amant label. As a side note, the name St. Amant came about because it is Barberas maiden name. In 1996 after a lawsuit with the then current Landlord the winery found an old post prohibition Winery for sale and bought the land. At this time the current Winery was dying of Phyloxera and there was a deal worked out with other grape growers that if they would bring 2 tons of grapes the St. Amant Winery would make the wine and give them each 25 cases. The St. Amant Winery would make out by keeping the rest of the wine for themselves. This worked out great and everyone was happy. The Winery has since expanded to have a total of Five different Vineyards and the wineries produces 9 different varietals of wine including our Tempranillo. In 1996 Tim passed away and his son Stuart who graduated from UCSB and works for The Lodi Wine-grape Commission  took over as Winemaker for St. Amant and it is his wine we are reviewing today.

Barbera Spencer

 
   On the pour this wine exhibits a beautiful Dark Strawberry appearance. Thrown in for good measure there is also the appearance of a medium cherry. Very nice on the pour. The wine sits in the glass just as beautifully and puts on display the same wonderful combination of colors and hues that the actual pour exhibits.
   The Bouquet of the wine is that of Cherry, Caramel and Cocoa. The aroma of the Caramel and Cocoa both work beautifully together in the glass, hopefully you have a good quality glass in order to be able to appreciate it.
   On the Palette this wine has a bright,  Tart Cherry flavor that seems to dominates here. There is Cocoa and very light Tannins showing as well.  I initially gave this wine about 45 minutes to open up and it did indeed have some positive changes that took place in it during that time. In the end there ended up being two hours before this wine finally finished opening and displaying what it truly was. One of the changes it did have is that the Tannins started to become more pronounced which was nice. There was also the taste of Current and Blackberry that had developed here. There was a bit of acidity that developed as well which blended together nicely with the Current and Cocoa. The Tart Cherry did tone down after a while but still was just a hint to present for me to be able to overlook it. The big story to me is the things that this Tempranillo DOESN'T have that is actually what I find interesting and rather, to be honest disheartening since I do love a good Tempranillo. We will discuss that next in the closing paragraph.
   Well here you are, you made it to the closing paragraph so let's start off with what I wanted to discuss earlier in the actual tasting part of this article. Although this wine did remain a little bit too much on the Cherry side for me it did end up becoming a decent wine just not a decent Tempranillo if that makes sense. The wine seems to never exhibit that Tempranillo peppery or earthiness taste that the varietal is known for and makes me love it. The wine is for the most part straight forward cherry. The cherry does tone down however once it opens up. Don't get me wrong here, the Cherry on the Palette is NOT terrible at all it's just that I don't like it being the dominating aspect of a wine. There is also that Cocoa on the Palatte present in the wine which helps add a little smoothness to it. This Tempranillo is missing the key flavor or notes that I feel a Tempranillo should have and that is those beautiful Peppery, earthy type notes, this I cannot forgive.  This flaw might be because it is a young wine though, I am not sure. I have an odd feeling though that this wine has potential and might in the end turn out to improve, I think I will buy a bottle and put it away for a couple of years to find out. I do believe it is worth the opportunity. This wine overall kind of ends up being in a category of it's own. What I mean is while I do not believe it will ever fit into the category of a true Tempranillo it also doesn't fit into that of a Merlot, Cabernet or even Syrah either. While it did end up developing the Tannins to be a good Merlot, it never quite presented itself with the characteristics to be a Merlot. It also never reached the depth or complexity of  a decent Cabernet  and of course did not even come close to the depth of a Syrah. It sat on it's own somewhere in the middle of all three varietals which is not in itself bad. Here are my last thoughts on this wine. Give this wine 2 hours to decant and I think you will end up enjoying it, it is not at all a bad wine. Do not open this wine however with the expectations of enjoying a wine with the power of a true Tempranillo and I think you will like it..

   On The Desert Wine Guy rating scale I put this wine at 86 points.

St. Amant Vineyards

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