We are excited to announce the addition of a brand new wine to the Craig collection: a single-vineyard estate-grown Grenache from Candlestick Ridge Estate Vineyard on Howell Mountain. We asked our fearless leader Elton Slone to share a few thoughts about this new wine:
“As John Cleese would famously exclaim for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “And now for something completely different.” It’s time to debut a micro-lot gem from our Candlestick Ridge Vineyard: the 2023 Howell Mountain Grenache.
“When we purchased the Candlestick property in 2015, half of the twenty-six planted acres at the northern summit of Howell Mountain required a replant. Winemaker Stephen Tebb and our farmer Towle Merritt convinced me to keep a small section of Grenache and Syrah, John Alban heirloom clone, right at the intersection of the piece scheduled for replanting and the portion of the vineyard that would remain in production. I was pushing to include that section in the replant at the time but was dissuaded by their excitement for the vines and clones.
“It took a huge amount of work over the next four years to bring the vines back to health by training back to the scion and removing any bacterially infected wood (Eutypa). The cost and effort was crazy for just a few tons of fruit, but when we tasted the first editions of Grenache Rosé and our 2015 Côte de Craig, a Syrah-predominant blend with some added Grenache, I was blown away by how transparently the wines displayed the volcanic soils, spicy fruit and high elevation structure of Howell Mountain. I love a little Rhône spirit in the heart of Bordeaux.
“Fast forward to the fires of 2020 that heat damaged our Syrah vines (all of that work down the tubes), and suddenly, our Cote de Craig was tilted more heavily towards Grenache than to Syrah in recent vintages. Côte de Craig is meant to be an ode to Côte-Rotie, and that necessitates a Syrah-based wine, full stop. We could have certainly purchased some Syrah fruit, but that’s not how we do things at Craig with our estate bottlings. What to do while the replanted Syrah block matures?
“Enter the inaugural release of Grenache, a stand-alone red wine from the 2023 vintage as a single vineyard, four-barrel lot. 100 cases. Our next-door neighbors at Outpost produce a fantastic Howell Mountain Grenache, and though the Robert Craig Winery version differs significantly in style, it features the same piercing display of what makes Howell Mountain special. If you love a good Châteauneuf-du-Pape, this will stand in as a high elevation stunt version.
“I realize that most of our collectors are here for the Cabernets, but this wine is just an extraordinary, tiny-production gem that is something entirely different from what is produced thousands of feet below us on the valley floor.
“As always, we priced this Grenache beyond fairly to make it available for dinner this week, or for the wise and patient, to cellar for a later occasion.”
Elton Slone
President/CEO Robert Craig Winery
