View As PDF - Wine Country This Week

WINE COUNTRY NEWS | WINE COUNTRY THIS MONTHPaso RoblesLos OlivosCarina CellarsCarina Cellars owner DavidHardee has turned a passion for foodand wine into a winery dedicated toshowcasing the Central Coast’s qualitiesas a phenomenal winegrowingregion. David, who lives on CarinaCellars’ Westside Paso Robles property,says that he has accumulated hisknowledge of wine over time, “I havebeen drinking and collecting wine allmy life.” As David has traveled torenowned wine regions in France,Austria, Germany, Argentina, Italyand Spain, his confidence in theCentral Coast has weight to it. “TheCentral Coast is where it is at,” Davidsays, “in terms of wine regions in North America.”Carina Cellars had been operating at its Los Olivos location forfive years when David bought the 83-acre property in Paso Robles.He was interested in Paso Robles as “a place to grow the best Rhônevarieties in North America.” Looking at the soil and the climate,David envisioned what now sits on the property: a vineyard ofmainly Rhône varieties thriving in the “very unique microclimate” ofPaso Robles’ west side. Carina Cellars’ vineyard on Adelaida Roadproduces Mourvedre, Syrah, Grenache, Viognier, Grenache Blanc,Tannat, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon, most of which are nowin their fourth or fifth leaf.Twenty-three acres on the Carina Cellars property have beenplanted in grapevines, and each year Carina Cellars produces around2000 cases of wine, much of it estate-grown. With a focus on blends,10Carina Cellars produces about tenwines each year. David explains thatthey produce six core wines whichare fairly consistent from year to year,and then look to the vineyards todictate the remaining blends. He saysthat with these ever-evolving blendsthey “let the wine tell us what to dowith it each year.”One blend that Carina Cellarsproduces each year, and which is abest-seller, is their “7 Percent” wine, ablend of 93% Syrah and 7% Viognier.While blending a white wine with ared wine is not a new technique – asDavid says, “the Romans taught theFrench how to do it in the Northern Rhône 2000 years ago” – thefact that they brag about the 7% is fairly unusual. David finds thatthe Viognier makes the Syrah “more feminine, more elegant” andthat it “smoothes it out.”While Carina Cellars is the vision of owner David Hardee, herelies on the expertise of Winemaker Joey Tensley, with whom he hasbeen working since 2002, to produce the trademark Carina Cellarsblends. Joey is also familiar with winemaking regions worldwideand works as a consultant winemaker for wineries in France andArgentina when he is not working the Central Coast harvest.Carina Cellars strives to produce wines which let the qualities ofeach varietal come through in the wine – as David says, “We don’treally screw with the wines.” To achieve this goal they focus much oftheir attention on the vineyards, and grow low-yield crops each yearFind out more at www.WineCountryThisMonth.com