Wine Club, July 2017
Jalama Cañon Ranch - Rosé of Pinot Noir 2016 - Santa
Minimus - Rockwell American Red Blend
Welcome to the Satellite Santa Barbara Wine Club!
This month is the start of something wonderful. As this is our first wine club release I wanted to select a pair of special wines that represent a common theme moving forward. Old/New, Classic/Experimental, Local/Out There. These are the queues that inform our monthly selections and they’re what excite me about wine and life in general. We will explore what wine is and what it can be, from it’s foundations to its logical conclusion... while sometimes outlandish - you won’t find a wine here that is wrong
We are Satellite, and we are exploring. We take what we know from our base in Santa Barbara and we compare it with what we discover from the wide world. Thank you for joining us on our great adventure
Jalama Cañon Ranch - Rosé of Pinot Noir 2016
Santa Barbara County
A local favorite, a unique terroir, and a classic Rosé. 100% estate grown Pinot Noir, 100% destemmed and soft pressed after 24 hours on skin, with 8 months elevage in neutral oak barrels. With just 5.5 acres of purposefully planted vineyard on this 1000 acre coastal cattle ranch, extreme attention is given to the health of each vine. Sheltered from the strong coastal winds by the surrounding mountains, the climate here is cool, with high altitude, and ever-cycling temperature shifts. Winemaker Allison Thomson gives voice to this perfect vineyard. JCR is a lonely ranch high away from the Santa Rita Hills / Just 7 miles off the sea / Has a locally unique soil of limestone and clay separate from the massive local vein of diatomaceous earth / sustainably farmed / generally dope
Look for an incredible soft rose-petal mouthfeel, a wealth of fresh strawberry and a hint of the local chaparal. This wine is a reflection of one of the greatest harvests in Santa Barbara history and is built to serve chilled on a hot summer day in the Santa Barbara hills. “Take me for a hike” she whispers from the case.
45 cases produced
$31 @ Satellite SB
Minimus - Rockwell American Red Blend 2015
Carlton, Oregon
Minimus is doing things that may have never been done in the 15,000 year history of winemaking. Irreverent, austentatious, sexy as sin. This wine is the fantastic and improbable unification of 5 grapes that nearly never meet, in any blend of their parts, in any region in the world. 40% Tempranillo, 25% Syrah, 20% Blaufrankisch, 10% Viognier, 5% Sauvignon Blanc; 100% uncharted territory. Aged in a mix of neutral Acacia wood, and American, Spanish, & French Oak barrels for 10 months. Winemaker Chad Stock is as much a deviant in the cellar as he is a visionary winemaker and a completely normal seeming dude. This is a man who makes a brettanomyces inoculated wine aged under the open sky in a forest… ‘Brett’ a strain of bacteria known to annihilate entire wineries and yet this clean cut Oregonian family man is letting it loose just because he thinks it’s neat.
Fantastic & Preposterous
This wine is an incredible treat and a welcome relief from expectation and tradition. Slightly frothy in the glass, and the palate, with bright plummy and wild berry fruit, a wonderful levity, this wine is quaffable, delicious, exotic in style and completely American in every sense of the word. It’s a drop-top Volkswagen Cabriolet driven by a French speaking Spaniard wrapped in an American flag - It makes no sense, but it fits quite happily in my glass as it will in yours.
“Serve me chilled as you would a white wine, but let me warm as you pour me little by little.. Never to be made again, enjoy me for now and luxuriate in my freedom!”
515 cases produced
$35 @ Satellite SB