Community Tasting Notes 3

• Tubulus wrote: flawed

  January 22, 2019 - Unfortunately had dnpim levels of Brett.

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• Ticker tape guy Likes this wine: 89 points

  January 9, 2019 - a bit light but tasty..acdic and mineralogy on the initial taste..smoothed out over time..a little berry on the finish

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• BadaBingAgain Likes this wine:

  January 5, 2019 - Clos Saron will be listed next to the best of them at some point in ours lives so you may as well start getting their bottles now, before everyone else makes that harder and harder to do. Small batches, big passions, big knowledge and a willingness to be creative with each year’s yields is why they’re the one to follow.
  
  Most established wineries tend to stifle their grape yields’ full potential by letting their sugar contents dictate their harvest. They do this to maintain a favor constancy from one year to the next in order to appease their following and critics, which is not meant to suggest its a horrible practice of course, but it does usually limit the full character of the fruit and all the elements involved in their making. More often than not, it also limits the creative freedoms one has in their wine making processes and blendings.
  
  I think this is just one of the key reasons Clos Saron differs from most other wineries; they strive to annunciate the inputs and outputs of their grape’s to the fullest. Without carrying on too much here, I think one way of saying it is that most other wineries will try to contain the year to year differences with their fruit by directing their outputs to a signature flavor. Clos Saron lets their grapes lead the way as to where each year’s offerings will ultimately go, even when it means getting flavor varieties from their carryover releases.
  
  Clos Saron takes their grapes when they’re at their fullest potential, and with that, they often get grapes from one year’s yields that are very different from prior years, and the sugar differences aren’t the only aspects changed through their process. All the subtle, and not so subtle differences from exposure, light , heat, water, chill, wind, dirt, etc., are allowed to also show themselves in their fullest forms, the results of which require constant changes to blends/co-fermintations, and not just through agmentions of past blends, but rather with usual additions and/subtractions of specific grape varieties to their carry over signature releases, which among being risky on several fronts, requires much in the way of small batch testings that ultimately produces carry over releases that are more a recomposition, rather than just a rendition, from their past songs. This requires so much in way of knowledge and know how on so many levels of management and directing, and this is where the alchemy beings.
  
  The conductor at Clos Saron is an unsung genius in my belief, and the wine Gideon makes is joyous beauty. How many other wine makers/wineries other than Clos Saron let many of their wines age for years on end in their barrels, and yet again aged for further additional years after bottling until those particular releases/varieties show themselves fittingly matured for retail consumption? This is just one of many very costly practices employed by Gideon, who in conjunction with his wife Saron, goes through in their quest, and consistent success, in exposing the flavors from all elements, dirt and fruit into their purist forms while making “..the finest wines available to humanity...”, if I may borrow from the great Bruce Robinson, and one his characters, ‘Withnail’.
  
  If you’re ever inspired to try their wine, and you’re obviously reading this, so either you have already or you’re thinking about it, I’d recommend getting and opening enough so that you can taste it over a 2 day period for a better understanding of what’s inside those bottles you’re drinking. The first sip from a bottle will speak one language that, depending on the length of time and air it’s exposed to, can end up sounding very different to the bottle’s last sip. This isn’t to say one sip is better than the other, because the first sip never displeases, but you if take you time with it, you’ll allow the wine to show itself in it’s many different forms. Or you may just drink it up quick and easy, being throughly satisfied too. In either case, you’ll be pleased you did and you too will likely notice the greatness within their wonderful wines.
  
  Trying to grade their wine seams almost disrespectful, but please just know that i found it to be more than worthy of a Clos Saron label. This 2015 being a recent release is in its infancy stage, but it’s very wonderful now, and in fact, so much so that I’ve already taken down another bottle from my stash. It’s going to be hard to allow my other bottles the minimum 5 years of cellaring they rightfully deserve, but at mentioned above, anything I’ve tried Gideon has been nothing short of stellar from day one on the market. Many believe that you miss out by not allowing for that extra time to be added to a vintage, but I usually feel with great wines like theirs, that you get more than enough pleasure from great wines while in their youthful stages, as you do from their later years, but do try and save some for aging as you do owe it to yourself to taste the dramatic differences from year to year with each of their releases, and as mentioned above, many like the Spring Frost, were aged 5+ years years before their release. I believe this particular Carigan was aged approx 2 yrs prior to its release, and while it still has many years+ of furthering potential, it’s rather quite nice right now.
  
  Try all their wines. The Pinots and Syrahs are just as good, if not better, than those touted on magazine covers. This Carignan is fantastic too, and was my first of many happy experiences yet to come through the other bottles of it I have in waiting. The Sprint Frost release is next on my list to enjoy, and with less than 900 bottles of it in existence, you may want to get some now if you wish to do the same.
  
  If I sound like their advertiser, I promise you, I am not. I’m just a big fan who was re-shown the beauty of wine, which I had lost for a time before again being reminded of it through drinking my first bottle of 2008 Clos Saron Black Pearl 5+ years ago. I hope this helps you try one of their wines so that you too may find in them something equally memorable.
  Cheers

  3 people found this helpful Comment

Pro Reviews 2

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2015
• Type Red
• Producer Clos Saron
• Varietal Carignan
• Designation The Pleasant Peasant
• Vineyard n/a
• Country USA
• Region California
• SubRegion n/a
• Appellation California

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 0 (0%)
• In Cellars 20 (67%)
• Consumed 10 (33%)

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