Carignan was planted across California in the 1910s and 1920s as a workhorse grape, intended for bulk wine production. Most of the early plantings went into anonymous jug wine through most of the twentieth century. A handful of those original blocks survived. The hundred-year-old vines are now producing some of the most interesting reds in the state.
The Spanish origin
The grape came from northern Spain, where it is called Carinena, and where it remains central to wines from Priorat, Montsant, and parts of Rioja. The Spanish style is dense, dark, structured, often blended with Grenache to soften it. The California old-vine versions tend brighter and more elegant, the result of dry-farmed hillside sites and decades of vine adaptation.
Southern California sources
The local growers we source from have small old-vine Carignan blocks, typically half an acre to two acres each, dry-farmed on hillside slopes. The vines produce small yields, two to three tons per acre against an industry average closer to seven. The concentration is real. The wines are serious.
Tasting note
Dark red, almost garnet. Black cherry, dried raspberry, a small note of bay leaf, and a tannin profile that reads as fine-grained rather than aggressive. The wine ages remarkably well; a varietal Carignan from a hundred-year-old block can pour beautifully at twenty years.