2020 Sandlands Angelica
Community Tasting Note
AD_jutant wrote:
Friday, April 12, 2024 - Edit: massively extended the note to include a summary of my fun research following drinking the wine.
Very cool thing: white fortified wine, made of Mission grapes. Real throwback to how California wine looked like even before the first wine wave in the state. It comes from around the turn of the 19th century when Spanish missions started making the drink by adding brandy to unfermented grape juice or must, akin to ratafia de Champagne. The drink was born for religious purposes and is mostly only used as such today but it has enjoyed a time of high commercial success during its >2 centuries of history peaking at 13 million gallons in 1955.
It used to be aged in solera, sometimes for up to a decade. Today, commercial production is slightly different: often shorter ageing (this is 2020 vintage already), sometimes vintage wine (again, like this one), and it is always (I think) made in the typical fortification method where addition of brandy halts the ongoing fermentation.
The name "angelica" is thought to come directly from the city of Los Angeles, as that's where missions sourced their high-quality brandy in the mid 18-hundreds from Augustine Janssens' distillery
Nose of Easter cake with vanilla icing, raisins, and dough. There are also dried apricots, honeyed apple, citrus peels, and fennel seeds.
A lot more of apricot and vanilla sugar on the palate. Sweet and viscous, of course with a slight alcohol burn. The acidity is not high. Slight medicinal note or something.
The finish is slightly short with that alcohol burn.
8-/18. Really fun to try, but they could probably do better (if Mission allows?). Perhaps a longer ageing could have helped.
I may have not rated the wine very high, but I really loved trying it and what is better than a wine that makes you go to JSTOR for research articles? :D
P.S. shoutout to LULU restaurant in LA, one of the best wine lists I've seen in the city: not long, but diverse, fun, and so very well priced. This was only $9 a glass!
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Comment posted by RichEB1:
4/13/2024 8:07:00 PM - Thanks for the note. Since you didn't seem to dig this wine, are there any super old-vine mission Angelica wines that you would recommend over this one?
Comment posted by AD_jutant:
4/13/2024 10:36:00 PM - I’m sorry, I really can’t recommend anything else! That was the first time I tried Angelica and maybe Mission at all. I also did not dislike it, 85 points for me is still a good wine (as far as fortified sweet wines go, this is the same rating that I’ve given Sandeman Ruby Porto, for example), I just did not find it outstanding, I did not see the great balance and complexity that other editors have found. But once again, I was really satisfied with the wine, especially at $9 a pour after dinner.