Green Man Wine Works

Green Man Wine Works Garage wines of distinction Garage Wines of Distinction

Apple pie spice bacon starts the cure
05/03/2020

Apple pie spice bacon starts the cure

Accomplished artist Sharon La Bouff used the Green Man label in her award winning mixed-media piece. Who cares what it t...
09/10/2018

Accomplished artist Sharon La Bouff used the Green Man label in her award winning mixed-media piece. Who cares what it tastes like when it looks this good.

02/08/2018

2011 again saw only one wine, a zinfandel-syrah blend from Sorpresa (now Famighetti) vineyard in the upper reaches of Dry Creek Valley.

It was ok wine, but the fruit was overshadowed by tannin and (so far) it's hasn't evolved into anything especially pleasurable. Keeping a few bottles to see how they age, but not expecting much.

2012, on the other hand, was the first wine since 09 or 06 that I would confidently pour for a wine geek. Syrah from the above-mentioned vineyard was late-picked but very balanced and flavorful, and it has matured and become more impressive over time. I have yet to have a bottle that didn't please. The downside was there was precious little of it.

10/17/2017

Resuming the lore of GMWW vintages, 2010 was a year we thought we were going to skip. Then, over a couple of glasses at the Los Altos Grill, I ended up talking to Barbara Rhodes Cannon, whose brother Richard owns the Rhodes Vineyard in Redwood Valley, up in Mendocino County. You may be more familiar with them as the source of Rosenblum's Annette's Reserve, a wine instrumental in putting Kent Rosenblum on the map.

Anyway, turns out he had some syrah that was still unsold so I got some grapes courtesy of Barbara's son Cody, who did the driving and picking.

The wine turned out lovely and elegant, but in my first go at using oak cubes to add wood to the wine, I noticeably overdid it. Given sufficient decanting and such, the wines were drinkable, but only just, and purely because it was like trying to enjoy a delicate fruitiness in an operating lumber mill. So lesson learned. I wish I had refrained, because it was terrific until I messed it up.

P.S. The recent fires included a major but less-well-reported blaze up in Redwood Valley, and it appears that the Rhodes have suffered very substantial losses.

First-time winery visitor last night. Biggest crowd at any winery anywhere, ever. Anything else is .
10/07/2017

First-time winery visitor last night. Biggest crowd at any winery anywhere, ever. Anything else is .

07/24/2017

2009 was a watershed year for GMWW. Excellent harvest and a bit of luck. Got syrah and zin from Kemp vineyard, more zin from Vyborny, and to top it off Dave Coffaro (David Coffaro Winery) was in a genial mood and sold me some Block 4 that he'd just crushed. Talk about a score.

Then as the season progressed and the early rains came, Dave had not yet picked his carignane and was pondering just writing it off, but in November Catarino came in with some good numbers and he let me know he was going to pick it. So I went back and got about 350 lbs of the stuff, from which I made conventional red, rosé, and a port.

Bottled varietals and a couple blends. The only off wine was the Kemp zin, which developed H2S and even after I got rid of that had persistent bitter tannins I could not make go away. So several cases of that went toward h***h.

The others, though, have continued to be delightful over the years. The Block 4 lagged Dave's version but recently is coming into its own. The carignane, whole cluster fermented, was woody and spicy for a long time but now is a pretty neat wine. Nothing saw oak this year, it's all just fruit.

A few bottles of the port left and they are a unique pleasure.

Another batch of absinthe
07/23/2017

Another batch of absinthe

07/15/2017

'07 and '08 were somewhat dismal years for GMWW. In 2007 had great fruit--petite from Vyborny in Alexander Valley, zin and syrah from Kemp. Vinification went fine. But one of my barrels had gone skunky, and the zin and syrah ended up being marginal or disgusting, depending on how much lipstick you want to put on the pig. Tried a few over time hoping there was some bottle variation, but eventually they all got turned into h***h. The petite survived in the other barrel and was good albeit a bit over the top with acids and tannins. Opened one the other day and still drinkable, still evolving, still a bit on the acidic side and not readily recognizable as PS.

A 2008 syrah I made from Kemp fruit was all right, never great, and many bottles went into the h***h bucket. Don't think I have any left. I finally got the hint and threw away the other barrel too.

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Mountain View, CA
94040

Opening Hours

4:30pm - 5pm

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