2010 La Sangre de Jonata

According to winemaker Matt Dees, "the obsession in California, and in Oregon for that matter, with clonal selection and rootstock doesn't address the even bigger question of whether or not a particular clone on certain rootstock is well-suited for a region, much less a specific site."That's going to require a lot of time, he added, "because you need more than a decade from establishing the vineyard to getting fruit, making wine and then eventually figuring out whether the right call was made.Then you get to start all over if you (or whoever came before you) got it wrong."With more than 50 separate blocks planted across Jonata's 600+-acre property Dees has plenty of room to experiment, that's for sure.As usual, the Jonata wines showed an impressive level of power; in fact, one likely wouldn't guess that the 2010 reds came from a cool vintage.Dees attributed the power of the wines to low yields and, unsurprisingly, the increasing average age of the vines here.He also gave some of the credit for the wines' depth of flavor to the late-season heat spike but pointed out that because of the overcast and colder-than-average summer "there's bright acidity at the wines' core, which will allow them to age gracefully and for longer than most people think."

Jonata was one of the most pleasant surprises of my trip in the Central Coast this year. The wines have been terrific for some time, but winemaker Matt Dees seems to be taking things to a new level. A slightly less pushed style, more reliance on slightly larger barrels and less new oak are all relatively recent developments here. Of course, the vineyards are also getting older, and that has a huge impact on quality and complexity. In the past, the Jonata wines haven't always aged gracefully, but I get the sense that is going to be less of an issue going forward. This is a superb set of wines across the board. I tasted all of the wines from two sets of bottles; one was opened just prior to my arrival, the other set was opened and immediately re-corked about twelve hours in advance. In most cases, the bottles that had been opened overnight were more expressive, so I suggest giving these wines a healthy decant it possible.

Jonata truly stands out in the Central Coast as a producer of exceptionally refined wines. This year I tasted with Winemaker Matt Dees and General Manager Armand de Maigret. According to Dees, macerations were quite long in 2009 because the grapes had very high levels of phenolic ripeness. Vintage 2010 was trickier, especially with regards to rain that claimed at least one victim, the Cabernet Franc- based El Alma de Jonata, which was not produced that year. The 2009 reds were all in bottle, while the 2010 reds were in barrel. I also tasted the new releases from The Hilt, a new Pinot/Chardonnay project that is reviewed separately in these pages.