2018 Sabelli-Frisch Gordon W. Alicante Bouschet

I really appreciated that Adam posted a Silver Oak TN the other day, and figured that I should step outside of my norm once in a while as well. I was poking around the cellar on Saturday for something appropriate and realized that I had this in my “sometime soon” queue. It seemed like auspicious timing with BD right around the corner and, trudging through writing TNS for a bunch of my own wines, it seemed like something that would be a lot of fun to taste.

We p-n-p, tasting the wine from Grassl Cru, and I am really glad that I opened this for a number of reasons:

1. it’s delicious

2. it’s very well done, walking the line of being completely drinkable while feeling like it should age reasonably effortlessly.

3. it’s also, charmingly, very different from my norm but clocking in at 12.7% abv, is very refreshing and easy to drink…yet, still a pretty serious wine…but so fun…still, it’s definitely a serious wine…but so easy to drink…and yet here I am on day 3 with it and I am pretty much running around in the same circles(full disclosure, we have been tasting BD wines the past 2 nights or this would NEVER have made it this far).

4. maybe my favorite thing about this wine is that it doesn’t taste like it’s trying to be an AFWE wine. It tastes like Alicante Bouschet, and the only “lighter” aspect about it, IMO, is in the finish, where the 12.7% really stands out. I don’t think Don Cornutt should stop drinking Burgundy over this wine, but I definitely am wondering why the heck more people aren’t making wines like this?

Juicier than most of my old world faves, but some great tar and leather notes keep the fruit peripheral. Think non-fruit=lion, and fruit=lion trainer, the beast is in the center but the trainer keeps everything contained. Perfectly weighted, acid is comfortable and non-intrusive, but the lighter back end keeps its balance very well.

Well done Adam, I am guessing that I liked this Sabelli-Frisch quite a bit more than you did the Silver Oak(as reasonable as that bottle was for you). I need a bigger allocation this year…

I know Adam’s mission is Mission, but I like his AB even better. This is a really good wine!

There were a couple of good Alicante Bouschets from Napa back in the day, not sure the vines are still there, though.

-Al

I enjoyed a bottle of this Friday night while out ice fishing, he does great work!

The dark recesses of my brain tell me that Coturri made one. Don’t recall any of the details other than that it was a really delicious wine with some “natural“ characteristics.

Papagni! Scored a bunch from the 70’s for a song at auction and they’ve all been great.

Thank you Marcus! Means a lot coming from you!

Just like you said, it’s hard to pin down. It’s both bold and light at same time. I wish I could take credit for that, but I was just along for the ride that first year. But, I do see why quite few producers do AB - they take forever to come around and can be quite meaty and bloody/animalistic in their youth, so not so easy for a small winery to deal with (that need a return on investment).

I’ve had a few really good Pagani AB’s (and a few meh’s, too). Doesn’t Carlisle make one every few years?

I’ve noted that “both bold and light “ quality in both the AB and the Mission. I love Steve Edmunds’ wines, in large part because of that characteristic, which I’ve thought of as weightlessness but now have a new vocabulary for.

Wow, pretty fringe/eclectic auction house!