Barnwood Vineyards

Barnwood is one of several Central Coast labels owned by Selim Silkha.  The best-known of the brands is Laetitia in Arroyo Grande – originally named Maison Deutz by the French Champagne house of the same name that planted the Laetitia vineyard site in the 1980s. While Laetitia is a cold-climate site in view of the Pacific Ocean, Barnwood is a high-elevation site in the Sierra Madre Mountains of eastern Santa Barbara County. Supposedly Laetitia is home to such cool-climate wines as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and sparkling wine, while Barnwood produces Bordeaux and Rhône varieties.

So go figure: Barnwood grows its Tempranillo – a Spanish grape accustomed to blazing heat – in the nice cool Laetitia vineyard in Arroyo Grande. To confuse us further, the appellation is San Luis Obispo County. Fortunately, you don’t have to sort any of this out to enjoy the wine.

If you’ve noticed the rising excitement about Tempranillo in California, it’s because of wines like this $22 winner: full of ripe and sweet raspberries, blueberries and cranberries, abundant body and stuffing, plenty of persistence, and tannin to keep it evolving for years more. You might expect more finesse from a grape with such a great European pedigree, but the winery is calling this wine "untamed" for a very tasty reason.

Reviewed June 15, 2006 by Thom Elkjer.