Date Night is what we’re calling our first “proper, still red wine.” Sure, we’ve made some red wines before, but this is the first time we really set out to make a 100% red-grape, red wine and, if we may say, it’s perfect for the season.

This wine came about, like so many great things do, from a mistake. It is inspired by last year’s Bath Time–a lil’ jumbo we made that never quite fizzed the way it was supposed to, but we loved the result anyway—round fruit, bold flavors and light tannins.
Date Night is one hundred percent Grenache from Arroyo Seco, harvested from Zabala Vineyard. We picked Grenache in two phases, one week apart from one another, and put the fruit into closed tanks for carbonic maceration. We pressed the earlier harvest immediately, but let the later harvest ferment on the skins for a while, with punch downs twice a day. This lets the fermentation grow dry, meaning all the sugars resolve, and “punching down” integrates the fruit, color, tannins and texture of the wine. We aged everything after blending in neutral oak for 10 months.

We bottled without sulfites, resulting in a live wine with soft herbal notes, and freshly picked wild cherries. It’s perfect to share with or without food, after a slight chill!

100% Grenache

12.5% ABV l 0/0

Jumbo Time Wines is a Los Angeles based natural wine project, started by Omar Koukaz & Jonathan Yadegar in 2020. We work organically grown (dry farmed & biodynamic when possible) fruit & practice zero intervention in the cellar. We are proud to work along side farmers to make wines that are the result of curiosity and excitement surrounding what the glorious state of California has to offer.
Our approach to winemaking goes as follows: enter harvest with an eye on the varietals we love and a loose idea of the types of wine we want to end up bottling. We then proceed with different methods of experimentation — all the while, working alongside (and at the mercy of) Mother Nature.
We have an acute sense of the style of wine we want to make so when it comes time to finalize the cuvées, we start by blending various barrels of the juice we’ve produced. Working with individual fermentations of each grape, we can then determine what combination makes sense in the glass together. The result is a lineup of wines that are all interconnected, playing off the decisions made during harvest, as well as in the cellar during blending.
We like to eat, and we definitely like to drink. These wines are a product of our love for gathering around a table with friends. Jumbo Time is all about exploration and our interest in figuring out how something got to be so damn good!
Our wines are fun to drink, and we hope you have as much fun drinking them as we did making them!