Wine from those wild men at Au Bon Climat

Primo
Originally uploaded by suebobdavis.

I love the Au Bon Climat boys. They make some great wines out at the Central Coast Wine Warehouse in Santa Maria. Some of the various labels out of CCWW are, of course, Au Bon Climat but also Makor, Qupe, Cold Heaven, Ici/La bas, Il Podere dell Olivos, and then this...it is labelled "Borgo Buon Natale 2000 Primogenito/First Born" which makes me think they had a couple days around Christmas 2000 and started fooling around making wine. That's just my guess.



I met these guys when I used to work at a wine label printer, the now-defunct Printing Connection in San Luis Obispo (The former owner, Scott Remmenga, is now a winemaker himself with Alapay Wines in Avila Beach.)

We printed the labels for some of the CCWW wines and they were always some of my favorite customers, especially Jim Adelman of Makor Wines, who has a heart of gold and never get the recognition he deserves, maybe because he is so dang humble and wonderful. Am I rambling?

Back to the wine...it is a tocai fruiliano/pinot grigio/pinot bianco blend. The proportions are listed as 40%/37%/27%, which either means someone has worse math skills than even me, or that they have lifted the rule on percentage being in 100 parts (well I keep hearing coaches say their teams need to "get out there and give it 110 percent!")

Not your usual white - it is more like a viognier than a chardonnay or sauv blanc). It is a zippy, fruity, spicy, mouth-filling blend that is complex with some kind of wild mix of floral and grapefruity, lemony, nutmeggy flavors.

I would have never known that this was a CCWW product except that I used to print these labels where I worked. As far as I remember (it has been a while) the Majolica tile border was painted by Morgan Clendenen, Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat's wife (and a winemaker in her own right - Cold Heaven is her label). She apparently has a business painting and selling tile, too.

I found this at Trader Joe's in Westlake Village, CA for $8.99, wedged in among the other whites. It is well worth the price. Buy some and have fun getting your guests to guess what the heck they are drinking.