Green Man Wine Works

Accomplished artist Sharon La Bouff used the Green Man label in her award winning mixed-media piece. Who cares what it tastes like when it looks this good.

2011 again saw only one wine, a zinfandel-syrah blend from Sorpresa (now Famighetti) vineyard in the upper reaches of Dry Creek Valley. It was ok wine, but the fruit was overshadowed by tannin and (so far) it's hasn't evolved into anything especially pleasurable. Keeping a few bottles to see how they age, but not expecting much. 2012, on the other hand, was the first wine since 09 or 06 that I would confidently pour for a wine geek. Syrah from the above-mentioned vineyard was late-picked but very balanced and flavorful, and it has matured and become more impressive over time. I have yet to have a bottle that didn't please. The downside was there was precious little of it.

Resuming the lore of GMWW vintages, 2010 was a year we thought we were going to skip. Then, over a couple of glasses at the Los Altos Grill, I ended up talking to Barbara Rhodes Cannon, whose brother Richard owns the Rhodes Vineyard in Redwood Valley, up in Mendocino County. You may be more familiar with them as the source of Rosenblum's Annette's Reserve, a wine instrumental in putting Kent Rosenblum on the map. Anyway, turns out he had some syrah that was still unsold so I ...got some grapes courtesy of Barbara's son Cody, who did the driving and picking. The wine turned out lovely and elegant, but in my first go at using oak cubes to add wood to the wine, I noticeably overdid it. Given sufficient decanting and such, the wines were drinkable, but only just, and purely because it was like trying to enjoy a delicate fruitiness in an operating lumber mill. So lesson learned. I wish I had refrained, because it was terrific until I messed it up. P.S. The recent fires included a major but less-well-reported blaze up in Redwood Valley, and it appears that the Rhodes have suffered very substantial losses.