Grenache is heat-seeking. Everybody knows this. Grenache hugs the Mediterranean Sea like a pasty-faced Scandinavian in search of a suntan in February. It thrives in torrid Barossa and arid Spain, it cozies up to cobblestones in Châteauneuf-du-Pape as if those fist-sized rocks were slippers.

For most of the grape’s natural life—first in Spain, where it originated in Aragon, then in France, Italy, Sicily, Corsica, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Israel, Australia, and Paso Robles—Grenache has been defined by the heat and sun and alcoholic strength. With few exceptions (Château Rayas, obviously, comes to mind), these are heady wines, redolent of extract and brawn. They are Beast Mode in wine form, knocking you back with such force that other varieties are called in to counterbalance its ebullience: the reductively-inclined Mourvèdre; the deeply colored, deeply flavored Syrah; the ballast varieties of Carignane, Cinsault, Counoise, Bourboulenc. In regions all over the world, tradition dictates that Grenache must be constrained. 

Except when it’s not. In the last decade and a half a host of California Grenache producers—Birichino, Popelouchum, Lindquist Family, Emme, Habit,  Whitcraft, Extradimensional Wine Co. Yeah!, and Newfound among them—have veered away from the heat zones, and eased  up on ripeness. An entirely new style has emerged, transparent and lean, aromatic, mineral, lifted.

The best achieve a kind of grace, a word which by some weird coincidence appears in the name of one of the wineries best known for the style, Angela Osborne’s A Tribute to Grace. “If you overcrop, if you’re overripe, they’re simple wines,” says Osborne. “If you don’t, they’re intoxicatingly layered, nuanced, assertive. Grenache illuminates the soil. It’s fruit with wisdom, with an energy that’s palpable. Which is why I love it, and why I’ve moved countries and worlds to make it.”

The OG (Original Garnacha?) of California Grenache is Randall Grahm, who just completed his 42nd consecutive vintage of the variety, most with Bonny Doon. He’s worked with more than 20 vineyards, old and new vines, multiple clonal selections, greater and lesser Central Coast sources, and has learned a thing or two. “Grenache needs a sort of Goldilocks regime as far as light and water stress,” he says Grahm. “Not too much, not too little.” 

Just-rightness describes the situation at Popelouchum, Graham’s radical vineyard site near San Juan Bautista (home to, among other things, a cultivar nursery and vineyard planted to grapeseed, not cuttings). Popelouchum is extremely windy, on the receiving end of cool Monterey Bay breezes. That coolness, he’s come to learn, gives the fruit chemistry an easy balance. “The cooler sites give you super low pH musts and low pH fruit,” he says, “which allows for physiological ripeness at lower Brix [sugar] levels—which is a beautiful thing.”

Grahm’s acolytes John Locke and Alex Krause, both of whom worked for him at Bonny Doon, embrace a similar aesthetic with their label, Birichino. Their top Grenache comes from Besson, a vineyard planted in 1910, on the very western edge of Gilroy. It’s warm enough for consistent ripening, and cool enough to preserve freshness and natural acidity. “It’s that restraint we love, along with great depth,” says Krause. “It manages to deliver this without the attendant heaviness one might expect from a variety better known for—and easier to make into—blockbuster fruit bombs.”

Angela Osborne also makes a Besson Vineyard Grenache that achieves a similar self-possession, but it’s hardly her only Grenache. She makes more than a dozen different single bottlings each vintage, from 11 vineyards scattered all over California. With her husband Jason, she travels more than 50,000 miles annually to keep tabs on her fruit sources. 

Osborne is from New Zealand, home to some of the coolest places for wine on earth, and where, for now at least, Grenache is a rarity. Osborne likes to say that Grenache has guided her career as a winemaker; until recently she’s made very little else. “Grenache taught me everything,” she says. “My first vintage of Grace was my second-ever vintage.” As such, her intuitions with the variety have kept her hand light, and her approach flexible and holistic.

Not that she feels what she’s doing is divergent. She’ll be the first to remind you that even in places like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where powerful wines are revered, the region’s pinnacle of expression is unquestionably Rayas, and the reason for this is for its balance and grace (a word that Osborne uses often, perhaps because it is the name of her grandmother).

Rayas inspired Matt Naumann of Newfound Wines to take up Grenache as well. Bruce Neyers, then the national sales manager at Kermit Lynch, was the first to turn him on to the wine—a tasting he still remembers vividly. “Those wines were my North Pole, the style that spoke to me first,” he says. With his wife Audra Chapman, Naumann now makes five different vineyard-designate bottlings of Grenache, inspired also by what might be construed as a global new wave for the variety, specifically those produced by Fernando Garcia and Dani Landi of Comando G in Spain’s Sierra de Gredos. “The wines of Comando G were groundbreaking,” he says. “They were so much lighter and nuanced, rather than big or powerful. It’s less about the heavy hand, more about flavor intensity. It was almost a Burgundian mindset.”

Jessica Gasca, of The Story of Soil, arrived at her Grenache aesthetic almost as a form of aversion therapy. A three-year stint at Sanguis wines, a Santa Barbara producer with Sine Qua Non aspirations, left her with a very clear impression of what she didn’t like. She left that gig with palate fatigue, barely able to finish glasses of wines that she helped make. 

But a bottle of Dragonette Cellars Grenache opened her eyes. Sourced from the Sta. Rita Hills, one of the coolest places in California where Grenache is planted, she found the wine light, crunchy and delineated. “Those were my first ‘wow’ wines,” says Gasca. “I saw that Grenache didn’t have to be heavy or overpowering.” The wines of Bob and Ethan Lindquist made a similar impression; eventually she was offered fruit from the former Lindquist vineyard now known as Slide Hill. With Story of Soil, she seeks to strike a balance between fruit and minerality. “I’m really looking to capture the mineral side of Grenache,” she says. That’s hard to capture in California, that earthiness—it’s easy to lose.” 

Indeed while there may be many seductive Grenache wines over 14%, once a wine exceeds that level of ripeness, the desired goal of freshness gives way to a profile more geared toward weight and power. Minerality falls away, acidity plummets, and in their place is a heady, jammy, emollient richness, sometimes with a granular textural sensation of unrefined sugar.  

In tastings this past month (see below) there was a range of lighter expressions, from cool and not so cool sites. The lowest alcohol wine, at 12.1%, was an unusually terse Brosseau Vineyard (Chalone AVA) Grenache from Extradimensional Wine Co. Yeah, which at first seemed like it would have benefited from some more time on the vine. But after the third day open it was singing, evidence that wine will reward cellaring. Jeff Fischer’s Spear Vineyard Grenache from the Sta. Rita Hills, managed to reach 13.5% alcohol, was texturally firm, with plenty of wild raspberry flavors. A pair of wines from Shake Ridge Ranch, Anne Kraemer’s jewel of a vineyard in the Sierra Foothills—one from Tribute to Grace, one from a young producer Rosalind Reynolds for a label called Emme—achieve great flavor intensity at low alcohols. The result, doubtless, from cooling afternoon breezes and an exceptional diurnal shift that occurs on the vineyard’s slopes.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the lineup was a trio of wines from Stolpman Vineyard, in Ballard Canyon: an Estate wine, one from Drake Whitcraft, and one from Story of Soil. Stolpman is an impeccably farmed vineyard on limestone and clay in the heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, about ten or so miles from the eastern edge of the Sta. Rita Hills— so it’s warmer without exactly being warm. Not two decades ago Ballard was thought of as one of the great places for growing Syrah in Santa Barbara County, though in the years since, as far as Syrah is concerned, tastes have shifted away from Ballard toward edgier, cooler locales. Grenache, though, loves the heat that Syrah can live without, and harvest dates for Grenache can run well into October. Each of the three Ballard vineyard wines  gave off very different impressions. 

Drake Whitcraft bottles a Grenache from shaded fruit left on the vine by his pal Pete Stolpman, who takes the remainder for his own bottling. Jessica Gasca also makes two Stolpman bottlings for Story of Soil. The Whitcraft, in 2023, comes in at 12.8% alcohol, and is tense and bright, all crunchy berry and flower petals. “It’s the most aromatic wine I make,” he says, “It’s all orange blossom and lavender,” and adds with a laugh, “like rich people’s bath product.”

The Stolpman bottling, at 14.1, is hardly excessive, but it is dramatically richer and much darker in color and flavor. It dips into licorice and soil notes, and has a hint of headiness. That leaves the Story of Soil, which at 13.2% as the Goldilocks wine of the three: peppery, with a wild berry sweetness, and a probing mineral note. 

It’s a small wonder we’re making these comparisons at all. But after years of assuming all that California Grenache could muster little more than monoliths, the state finally has a diversity  of styles that is bound to grow more compelling and wide-ranging with each passing vintage, and keep disrupting our expectations. 

California Grenache Tasting Notes

2023 Habit 2023 Sta. Rita Hills Spear Vineyard Grenache Noir ($30)

Beautifully tense and crisp, this leads with scents of violets and Sichuan pepper.  Angular, but with an expansive midpalate. Acidity and minerality keep the back end very cool and firm. 

2023 Birichino Central Coast Besson Vineyard Grenache ($32)

Dark berry and cluster spice alongside a hauntingly sanguine scent. Flavors fall right between savor and fruit. Fresh and balanced with a chalky mineral tannins, and a savory finish like a tea made with vine bark. A stunner, with an old vine composure that it shares with the Tribute to Grace wine made from the same vineyard. 

2023 Stolpman Ballard Canyon Estate Grenache ($36)

This leads with dark aromatics of licorice root and tea. More purple than red fruits. The flavors are plummy and brushy, concentrated, full of flavor and a fair bit of intensity, with a touch of heat and firm tannins on the finish. 

2023 Whitcraft Ballard Canyon Stolpman Vineyard Grenache ($36)

Very light in color, and lightly extracted (and just 12.8% ABV). Redolent of stems—smoky and lifted, and packing a lot of floral scents into a light wine. There’s also a  good middle palate weight for such a light wine. Smoked orange oil, exceedingly lean and persistent, finishes very firm. Needs time.

2022 Erggelet Brothers Contra Costa County Del Barba Vineyard Grenache ($40)

Most of the wines from the Erggelet brothers come from the Contra Costa delta sands, a fine terroir for Grenache. It is also hot. Relative to the other wines here this is a touch monolithic, but its high-toned raspberry scent carries a hint of sweat and cured meat. It’s brambly and bold. Rose hip accents on the finish frame a robust wine. 

2023 Emme “We Touch in Silhouette” Amador County Shake Ridge Ranch ($42) 

Among the prettiest of this lineup. Quite floral: purple flowers, bergamot, lilac, with a wild berry scent. Texture is sleek and suave, mildly granular,\; the wine gets more graceful for a few days after being opened

2022 Lindquist Family Grenache ($45)

A herbal perfume leads, with mint and pine tips. Brambly. The flavors have a very dark berry and cherry fruit profile, with dried flower accents, with firm smoky tannin and classic Lindquist restraint. From the Reeves Vineyard in the Edna Valley, in the new San Luis Obispo Coast AVA. 

2022 The Story of Soil Ballard Canyon Stolpman Vineyard Grenache ($48)

This is heady, but it’s a lees headiness. Starts off sleek and a bit edgy, pliant, but with a mildly bitter note throughout. With air, potpourri and pepper appear. Texture is broad at first, then crisply tannic, with a dusty soil note on the finish. 

2023 Extradimensional Wine Co. Yeah! Chalone Brosseau Vineyard Grenache ($50)

At just 12.1% ABV, this is light, with very high toned aromas of garrigue and crunchy red berry. Flavors are really on the edge—the fruit is light, but there’s an herby freshness. After three days it really became lively. Cellar this one.

2022 Newfound Mendocino County Cemetery Vineyard Grenache ($55)

Matt Naumann makes a half-dozen Grenache and Grenache based wines, including this one from a warm site that borders a cemetery near Ukiah. There’s a warmth of fruit (it’s 14.1% ABV) here alongside cool elements—horehound, turned soil, black tea, red raspberry—as well as a whiff of that old fashioned Rhône merde. Flavorful, a touch capacious, but tightly controlled.

2022 A Tribute to Grace Santa Ynez Valley Vie Caprice Vineyard Grenache ($57)

From a small high-density planting that the Grace team began farming in 2021, Osborne calls this her yin and yang wine, and indeed it walks a line between fruit and savor. Scents of red rose, fruit blossom and red cherry. Its flavors are generous but pretty in their restraint; red-fruited, with a dried herb finish.

2023 Popelouchum San Benito County Popelouchum Vineyard “en Passerillage” Grenache Noir ($NA) 

Wild turkeys got most of the yield on the estate in 2023. For this wine, Grahm folds partly dried whole cluster and destemmed fruit into layers, ‘lasagna’ style. It has a scent of anise and pepper. Mildly earthy. The flavors of currant and black cherry have an almost creamy texture. It’s firm and well structured; built to age, and made in microscopic quantities. 

2022 A Tribute to Grace Amador County Shake Ridge Ranch Grenache ($NA)

Considering the warmth of this place, the wine feels light and fairly delicate, a testament to Angela Osborne’s light touch. Scents of strawberry and rose petal belie a robust cherry flavor. The texture is plump and suave, with a velvety grip. Note: This wine and the below wine are currently mailing-list only offerings from Tribute to Grace. 

2022 A Tribute to Grace Santa Clara County Besson Vineyard Grenache ($NA)

A marvel, with a natural ripeness that feels like it’s in perfect balance. Dark scents of cherry and black raspberry. The flavors are cumulative and slightly savory—think tobacco and cherry skin. There’s a quiet assurance to the flavors that suggests old vine balance.