The Future of Mourvedre?

I love Mourvedre. I was introduced to the varietal years ago via Bonny Doon Old Telegram, Spanish bargains, and the Holy Beaucastel.

Now, I have been grabbing up a lot of California examples, and I see a trend, or perhaps just an undercurrent, toward lighter, fresher bottlings. Is this the future of Mourvedre? Is this what it should be? Is it just a period of counter-culture winemaking, to be experimented with and tossed aside? Was 2004 a vintage that served as the death knell for big juicy wines?

Will the real Mourvedre please stand up?

Still tons of good mourvedre in Bandol, last that I knew.

Not sure what your point is or where your data set is from. It’s a variety that for many years wasn’t done much on its own. In Europe, a lot of it was done in a very rustic kind of style. Look at where it’s grown - hot dusty places that have only recently (like in the last 20 years) been heavily investing and upgrading. They tended to be backwaters without a lot of money and little or no export market. In France, other than Bandol, it was used primarily as a blending grape and in relatively minor percentages, Beaucastel aside.

If I’m not mistaken, Spain still has more than anywhere else in the world by some order of magnitude. The wake up in Spain came as a result of the opening of Spain and emergence of Priorat, i.e. in the 1990s. Today there are high-priced and low-priced but talented winemakers working with the grape. It’s got far less of a foothold in the US and people are still feeling their way around. Some of the people may have been spurred on by the success of what was happening in Spain. Bandol as well has seen investment and interest in their wine that just wasn’t there in the 70s and 80s as the US was waking up to wine. And they’re reacting to the market as well.

So it’s not like there’s a generalized profile, a history, or a trend, at least insofar as I can see.

Domestically Cline has always made one and I think their Cashmere blend still includes a good shot of it. Brian Loring likes what Chris Ringland is doing in Spain and he makes a very credible and pretty tasty big style in CA. Larry Shaffer on this board does it too, in a slightly less opulent style.

Drew,

Many believe that Mourvedre expresses terroir well. That, and the fact that it is relatively cheap make it a logical target for the New California makers who are making less-ripe, less-oaked wines.

Have you noticed the established wineries changing their style? Or just the newbies?

There is no reason that there cannot be a wide range of Mourvèdre expressions. Not all Cabernet has the same profile. Not all Pinot Noir has the same profile. Tempier makes legitimate expressions of the grape as seen through their sites. A producer in California will do the same, and the wines will be different, but no less legitimate.

Therein, Drew…lies the crux of the problem.

When some folks drink a Cabernet, it must be from Bdx. There can be no other. No ScreamingEagle, no MonteBello, no Colgin…nothing.
When some folks drink a Pinot, it must be from Burgundy. There can be no other. No Siduri, no Marcassin, no Failla…nothing.
When some folks drink a Nebbiolo, it must be from Barolo…or Barbaresco. There can be no other. No Valtelline, no OltropoPavese, no Nervi, no Castelli…nothing
When some folks drink a… well…you catch my drift.

I prefer, when I drink some grape, to not let my expectations of that wine stand between myself and what the winemaker wants to tell me he did w/ that grape.
I think it’s perfectly fine to have a big/extracted Bandol and a light-on-its-feet Dirty&Rowdy. Or even a Mourvedre Rose. Or a Mourvedre Sforsato. Or a Sparkling Mourvedre.
It’s pretty much however the winemaker wants to interpret that variety. Obviously, if your preference for Mourvedre is a big/extracted Bandol; then that’s exactly what you
should be drinking. And I have no problem w/ that. Everyone should drink what they like.
Tom

Sometimes you can find old Tempiers, or other Bandols at auction or winelists.

I don’t know how the better producers manage the furriness/wet dog smells.

If lighter and fresher is what you seek, I highly recommend tracking down a bottle of Sandlands Mataro. (Mataro = mourvedre.) My wife and I greatly enjoyed a bottle last evening. Very delicious. I’m no good at tasting notes. Jon Bonne says: “As fragrant as Mourvedre gets - seductive rose petal, red currant, wild blueberry, and a surprisingly subtle leathery aspect.”

Funny thing is that my wife has long disliked mourvedre, having been turned off by some funky (wet goat-like) examples in the past. But she really enjoyed this one, and was surprised when I told her that this was her hated grape.

I’m not sure that we got alot of rose petal fragrance, perhaps we should have used glasses other than our go-to syrah glasses.

My guess is that the OP probably recently had a lighter style one? Or perhaps has been reading about a few of the ones on this board?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my style is dictated by vintage and vineyards. Some years, the wines will be bigger and more strucured; some years they will be ‘lighter on their feet’.

I’ve personally started doing a lot more whole cluster on my Mourvedres to add structure and more aromatic ‘intrigue’. But I am footstomping the heck out of the clusters; I am not aiming to do carbonic at all . . .

Cheers!

Quite a few very good Mourvèdre bottlings coming from California these days. La Clarine Farm, Tercero, Paix Sur Terre, Broc, Dirty & Rowdy just to name a few. Just the other day I tasted a barrel sample of 2014 Mourvèdre we’re making at Harrington Wines (from Sumu Kaw Vineyard in El Dorado County) - trying to decide whether we’ll blend it or keep it as a varietal Mourvèdre, and I thought it stood just fine on its own. I’ll be making a barrel for my own non-commercial project this year, probably with a high percentage (maybe 100%) whole-cluster fermentation - getting excited about that.

I haven’t found wine from Bandol to be uniformly big and extracted and I don’t find this to be the defining difference between Bandol and the New World Mourvèdre I’ve sampled.

To my palate, California producers have really struggled with their interpretations of Rhone varietals including Mourvèdre.

If there is a trend towards lighter bodied interpretations, I would see this as another step in an effort to figure out what to do with it.

I tasted a Mourvèdre Rose’ from Salinas, the 2012 Le P’tit Paysan Mourvedre Rosé Pierre’s Pirouette awhile back that was very good. So, maybe lighter and fresher is the way to go with Mourvèdre in California.

More than a hundred wineries in Washington state bottle single varietal Mourvèdre, or use it in blends.
Syncline and Chateau St. Michelle (limited release) are examples of a clean vibrant style, while Gramercy and Dusted Valley make gutsier versions.

P Hickner

This was my favorite Mourvedre in recent memory, and one of my favorite wines of the year so far. My TN from the time:

2011 Tercero Mourvedre, Santa Barbara County. To me, this was the most thrilling red of the evening. This receives the Santa Barbara County designation, because Larry went with a blend of the warm Camp 4 Vineyard and the cool Larner Vineyard. The blend, combined with the cool precision of the 2011 vintage, work wonders on this bottle. This is still a young wine, with considerable improvement ahead. It shows brambly blackberry fruit, black pepper, mineral and leather. With some time, some of the trademark beef and blood flavors are suggested. I’ll be quite excited to purchase this wine and watch it develop over the next 5+ years.

Maybe it’s just me being cynical, but why not go to Bandol for great Mourvedre?

I’m loving California wine these days. I’m drinking more than I have in a long time. Having said that, I find the degree of greatness of things like Mourvedre, or Tempranillo, or Barbera, or Sangio, or Nebbiolo, or whatever, where there are minute pockets of greatness around the world, that trying to grow/produce these varieties is like banging your head against the wall. The other side is that if you have to make it, you have to sell it!

I’m a fan of wines like Tercero and Porter Creek, but I’m not going out of my way to buy the wines. I’ll gladly order them buy the glass, or snag them if I see them in a store on vacation, but that’s about it. Just my 2 cents.

So you’ve already reached a final conclusion about which grapes are okay to grow and make into wines in California, versus which are a waste of time because you should just buy them from where they’ve been around longer? How did anyone discover that cabernet, chardonnay and pinot work well in California without good growers and winemakers trying them out in different sites? [I say that knowing I’ve teed it up for some Francophile to harumph about they _**don’t**_ work in California, but oh well.] How did anyone discover that you can make good pinot in Oregon, merlot in Tuscany, riesling in the Finger Lakes, and malbec in Argentina?

Just speaking for my own personal yak-like palate, I’d put that 2011 Tercero Mourvedre up against $30 mourvedre from Bandol and Spain any day. Not that one has to choose one versus the other, but I think the quality and character of the Tercero would show well.

I’m personally not a fan of this grape, but my experience is limited. Medicinal and tinny aftertaste to most that I’ve tried. I could certainly be convinced otherwise but there are so many other grapes I love out there, eg zin.

I recall some really outstanding Ridge Mataro released in their ATP progrom about a decade or so ago. IIRC, one of these came from truly ancient vines (110+ years old) in Contra Costa County.

Seeing as how different folks have different preferences, I don’t see how there’s not room on the table for many different interpretations of the grape. Mataro is, currently, the only red wine I have any modicum of interest in from Australia, even though I - admittedly - haven’t bought one in a while.

I do wish that American producers of Mourvedre roses would consider instead doing a Syrah rose, but I imagine I’m on a pretty lonely island with that view; apart from Tempier’s version, I’ve yet to have a Mourvedre rose that was particularly interesting.

To the counselor’s point, Larry’s Mourvedre seems to get better with each iteration. That said, I’ve seen some spectrum of expression too, with (IIRC) Dirty & Rowdy being on the lighter end. Hopefully on my upcoming trip I’ll have the chance to get a better look at some examples :slight_smile:

Brian, since you’ve had Tempier’s, why would anything else matter? [grin.gif]—still one of the greatest expressions of a Rose wine period, IMHO.

Mike

Thanks, RS, for the nod on our rose. Our 2014 (49% mourvedre) is just out/almost sold out. We also make a red Mourvedre from Spur Ranch in San Benito that is richer than Hardy’s – spur has very unique soils. I’m very interested to see what Hardy does with Chalone fruit he started getting in 2013 (?) because my experience with Mourvedre in CA is that it’s rarely positioned to excel. It’s a grape that is super finicky, and erratic when young. There’s another vineyard around here I’ve been trying to make inroads on that I think has tremendous potential but that has been in the wrong hands for a while. There was a time when the same could be said of CA grenache, but the last few years have been revelatory for that variety at least on the central coast.