Land of Saints Wine Company is a project by Angela Osborne, her husband Jason Osborne and the owner of the winemaking facility they use, Manuel Cuevas of C2 Cellars. Angela’s Main project, A Tribute to Grace, is dedicated to only the Grenache grape and its clones/mutations (see the Tribidrag discussion). Her Grenache wines are sourced from some expensive grapes, have garnered raves from the wine press and are, therefore, pretty expensive. For this project the three partners are using their various relationships to source non-grenache grapes from organically farmed vineyards and then offer up the wines at affordable prices. Incidentally, wineries have to pay more to mention a specific vineyard on the label, so while many of the wines come from a single vineyard from a smaller AVA in Santa Barbara County, the label won’t say so and the wines will always be declassified to the broad Santa Barbara County AVA. This wine is made of practicing organic, SIP certified 90% Mourvedre and 10% Grenache grapes, from an unnamed vineyard, that are fermented in stainless steel at cool temperatures to retain the fresh fruit aromatics. Pre-phylloxera, Mourvedre was the main grape in Provence, but given the choice when replanting vines, winemakers favored the consistently high yields of Grenache over the sometimes mysteriously unproductive vintages of Mourvedre. The Provence sub-appellation of Bandol never bowed to economic pressure, however, and now makes what many consider to be the best rosés in the world. Flavors of ripe strawberries, flowers and a touch of umami make this a food rosé. Serve with almost anything, but a salad with chicken, strawberries, goat cheese and vinaigrette would be perfect.
(Mourvedre)