Welcome to Wine of the Week, a new series in which Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley recommends a delicious bottle that you should be drinking right now. Check back for a new installment every Wednesday.
Valdiguie has become one of California’s trendiest wines in recent years, with producers like Cruse, Broc and Folk Machine turning out crushable, chillable versions of this light and juicy red. But for Central Coast winery J. Lohr, which has produced Valdiguie since 1976, trendiness has nothing to do with it.
J. Lohr farms 30 acres of Valdiguie in the Arroyo Seco AVA for a bottling called Wildflower, which at $10 is surely one of the best-value red wines made in California today. The wine is light, bright, juicy and spicy, suggesting black pepper, raspberry and sour cherry. It smells like your hands after you’ve rubbed a rose petal.
In fact, this Valdiguie — really, any Valdiguie — bears more than a few similarities to Gamay, the grape of France’s Beaujolais region that has a knack for conveying racy, fun energy while still maintaining a sense of gravitas. Although Valdiguie is an import from southern France, for the better part of the twentieth century, it was planted sporadically throughout Napa Valley and misidentified as Gamay. (In its official records, the USDA still does not distinguish between actual Gamay and “Napa Gamay,” a.k.a. Valdiguie.) But the variety fell out of favor in an era that favored fuller-bodied, robust red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon.
After all those years of languishing in obscurity, it’s easy to see why Valdiguie has become so popular lately among the trendy, newcomer wineries. Those energetic, easygoing qualities — all the crunchy red fruit flavors — fit perfectly within the profile of “translucent reds” that have become a new stylistic standard, a reaction to the era when Cabernet reigned supreme. But J. Lohr isn’t known as a hip winery, and its Wildflower Valdiguie has been expressing those traits long before crunchy red fruit came into vogue. It tastes that way not because it’s cool, but because the grape tastes that way.
Don’t lay this one down in your cellar. Drink it now, while it’s young, and you won’t be sorry if you stick it in the fridge for half an hour before you open it. This wine is lithe enough that it doesn’t require food, but it would respond well to roasted fall vegetables like parsnips and delicata squash.
J. Lohr Estates Wildflower Valdiguie Arroyo Seco Monterey 2019 ($10, 13%).
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October 21, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Drink this spicy, juicy $10 red wine that smells like your hands after rubbing a rose petal - San Francisco Chronicle
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