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Tatomer

Santa Barbara homeboy Graham Tatomer's enviable resume includes a year-long stint with Emmerich Knoll, in Austria's Wachau, that included the 2003, 2004 and 2005 harvests. What began as an infatuation with the gruner veltliner variety turned into a semi-career and project in 2008 that started with dry rieslings and expanded when he eventually found sources for gruner in the Central Coast. The market payoff has been slow but rewarding, he says, as production has nearly trebled, from 400 at the onset to almost 1,200 cases today. Tatomer, who continues to work at Brewer-Clifton, admits that he still runs into skeptics when he initially presents his wines, including a memorable encounter with a member of California's wine gentry who felt the need to remind him that he was in California, "so what's with the gruner?" What's with it, and with the rieslings as well, is cold, ocean-influenced vineyards whose long, slow growing seasons are ideally suited to those varieties, thanks to extremely slow ripening and the ability of the grapes to retain natural acidity. After that it's pretty simple, he says: he uses a roughly 80/20 blend of stainless steel and neutral oak ("for roundness and texture") in the cellar and then gives the wines a year or so of bottle age before release "so that they can unwind a little."

From Focus on California's Central Coast (Nov 2013) by Josh Raynolds

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2012 Gruner Veltliner Meeresboden Santa Barbara County

Release Price: $25

Color: White

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