Dragonette Cellars Grassini Family Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2020
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Parker
Robert -
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Suckling
James
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Grassini is an exceptional vineyard located upon small hills and river benches of
well drained, super fine clay loam soils and serpentinite. The vineyard is
meticulously managed and farmed to their specifications for low yields and high
quality. We purchase these grapes from several distinct blocks in the vineyard and
farm them on a per acre basis, so that we can control all farming practices,
including pruning, canopy management, yield control, irrigation and differential
harvesting of portions of their blocks.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Sauvignon Blanc Grassini Family Vineyard has pretty scents of apricot and nectarine with accents of tarragon, lime leaves, beeswax and flint. The medium-bodied palate is satiny and elegant with concentrated yet understated flavors, plenty of balancing acidity and a long finish with dynamic flavor layers. Generous and energetic, it's beautiful today but offers 5-7+ years' aging potential.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Moving to the two single vineyard releases, the 2020 Sauvignon Blanc Grassini Family Vineyard is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and offers exotic notes of ripe citrus, orange blossom, honeyed flowers, and brioche, with a kiss of background minerality. Rich and medium-bodied, with beautiful balance and a great finish, it's a richer example of this cuvée that still brings plenty of freshness and vibrancy.
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James Suckling
Plenty of grapefruit and sliced lemon with some stone. Full-bodied and layered. Fruit driven and flavorful at the end. Aged 15 to 17 months in used wood. Drink or hold.
Other Vintages
2018-
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Enthusiast
Wine
Brandon Sparks-Gillis met John Dragonette while they were both working at a retail wine shop not far off of the UCLA campus in Westwood. John and Brandon were both there to educate themselves about wine and take the opportunity to immerse themselves into the professional wine world. John was a practicing attorney and Brandon was a recent college grad who picked up the wine bug while traveling and studying geology for a summer in Italy. They began to strike up a friendship based on their common interests and ambitions in the wine world and eventually both moved on to their own winemaking and winegrowing jobs.
For a time, Sparks-Gillis cut his teeth working in a bakery starting at 2a.m. and then commuting to work vineyards in the evening. He then went on to working at Demetria and Sine Qua Non. John Dragonette worked for Fiddlehead and Costal Vineyard Care. In 2003, John and his brother, Steve Dragonette, joined up with Brandon Sparks-Gillis and began to make wine under the Dragonette label with their first commercial release in 2005.
In 2008, Dragonette moved into a warehouse to scale up production, sharing the space and some equipment with Ampelos Cellars, and sourcing fruit from the surrounding Santa Barbara County vineyards. They had always been enamored with the Santa Barbara as a region that made great Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Syrah, and they started to develop long-term and close relationships with vineyard owners. They were always hands-on as growers and to this day every site is hand-harvested under the keen eye of Brandon, John, or Steve. As production grew to 5,000 cases, Dragonette moved to their current winery in Buellton with a tasting room twelve minutes away in Los Olivos.
The depth of Dragonette’s wines begin in the vineyard with rigorous attention to detail to canopy management and crop yields. The clusters are gently handled during harvest and processing and then fermented with indigenous yeasts. There are no manipulations of the wine in the cellar either. Racking and the use of new oak is absolutely minimal. Only portions of the Pinot Noir lots are fermented with a very small amount of whole clusters, and Dragonette’s red wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.
As vignerons, they have committed themselves, above all else, to the mindful farming of precise blocks in exceptional vineyards for low yields and high quality and to the shepherding of these grapes into wines of purity, complexity and balance. Given the remarkable climatic and soil diversity in Santa Barbara County, Dragonette Cellars produces small lots of Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah of interest and distinction.
Capable of a vast array of styles, Sauvignon Blanc is a crisp, refreshing variety that equally reflects both terroir and varietal character. Though it can vary depending on where it is grown, a couple of commonalities always exist—namely, zesty acidity and intense aromatics. This variety is of French provenance. Somm Secret—Along with Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc is a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon. That green bell pepper aroma that all three varieties share is no coincidence—it comes from a high concentration of pyrazines (herbaceous aromatic compounds) inherent to each member of the family.
On the eastern end of the Santa Ynez Valley, the rolling hills of the tiny Happy Canyon AVA produce top quality reds from Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and whites from Sauvignon blanc. The region’s low-nutrient soil grows smaller vines and in turn, higher quality wine grapes.