Tempranillo-Cabernet

The wine that changed Texas wine history and the view of Tempranillo in
America.

The release of the 2003 Inwood Tempranillo-Cabernet was a landmark
event in Texas winemaking. Although we were technically the second
Tempranillo released by a small margin, the 03 was immediately
embraced by the culinary community in a way that no Texas wine had
ever been. Within a short time, almost 200 of the most highly regarded
restaurants were serving this wine. As further evidence of its impact, in
only 5 years, the number of Tempranillo wines made and sold in Texas
exploded to 38, as producers rushed to emulate Inwood's success. The
grape has been vaulted to "Grape for Texas" status (probably
erroneously as we shall see) and countless vines have been planted,
although many in the wrong places.

Our Tempranillo-Cabernet is a full-bodied, fully-extracted, inky blend
which varies around 55-65% Tempranillo and the balance Cabernet
Sauvignon. Both grapes are grown at the same location in the Texas
High Plains just a few miles from the Texas-New Mexico border. The
vineyard site, at Newsom Vineyards in Yoakum County, Texas, was
chosen for its combination of high mineral soils and cold desert nights
where the Tempranillo, in particular, found its perfect home for the
development of tannin and brix.

The French term "terroir", meaning the land or soil, but more widely
known in the wine industry as the flavors conveyed from the soil and site
elements to the wine, is critical in understanding our wines. Tempranillo
is a grape with the Red Fruit flavor profile, much like Pinot Noir, where
Cherries, Raspberries and Strawberries should be most evident. This is
opposite of Black Fruit varieties like Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah where
the dominant flavors should be Black Currant, Blackberries and Cassis.

Red fruit wines MUST have high mineral soils for their flavors to
materialize. For this reason, Tempranillo has never been a significant
grape for California. Yet this, and its native adaptability to hotter climates
make it the perfect wine variety for Texas with one caveat: Tempranillo
must have a nightime temperature of lower than 65 degrees for at least 8
hours every night during its ripening season (past veraision) to properly
develop. This requirement excludes most of Texas from its production,
hence, the explanation for it's erroneous statewide acceptance. To
achieve these cooler temperatures, the vineyard must be above 3500 feet
in elevation, only found in far western portions of the State.

Inwood produces this Blended Tempranillo as well as 100% Tempranillo.
For further explanation about the history of blended and unblended
Tempranillo wines in Spain, see our "Cornelious" 100% Tempranillo.

"Full Cellaring" as opposed to "Micro-Ox": What does it mean?

Inwood Estates is committed to fully-cellaring all its wines, a tradition that is fast slipping away from even some
of the highest-priced wines in California. Everyone knows that old wine becomes oxidized, and has seen that
familiar brown color and smell from exposure to oxygen. This exposure can be time-fast, like glasses of wine
sitting out too long in open air, or time-slow, like wine in bottles for too many decades.

By contrast, newly-vinted wine is born into the world in a state that is quite the opposite, which is called
"reductive". Reduction is the opposite of oxidation. Wine that is reductive is equally offensive to the senses as
is oxidized wine, but with quite different symptoms: Reductive wine, especially red, smells and tastes of
inorganic compounds like tire-rubber or plastic. As young wine ages, these sensory effects slowly leave and
sometime not long after they do, the wine is ready to be bottled.

Unfortunately today, most wine is bottled before this time. Aging wine in oak barrels ameliorates reductive
flavors, but is also the most expensive part of making great wines. Oak aging is a complex process too lengthy
to discuss here except to say that wine aging in barrels is aging at an accelerated rate compared to wine aging
in bottles. It is hard to establish a linear relationship between the two rates, but if, for example, a wine in barrels
is aging at 4 times the rate it will later age in bottles, it is easy to see why it is so important that this takes
place in a controlled environment like the winery.

Today, a manipulative, technological process called Micro-Ox is becoming more commonplace in wineries. By
injecting young wines with oxygen for various lengths of time, the reductive compounds in wine are forcibly
reduced allowing for the sale of younger wines sooner than normal. We believe this most often occurs at the
expense of the long-term quest to make the wine the best it could be. For more information about Inwood and
Micro-Ox, see "Articles by the Winemaker: Inwood and Micro-Ox".

Fully-cellared wines will always benefit from bottle age, but will at least display their true characteristics shortly
after their release. Experienced tasters will be able to predict with fairly good accuracy what the potential of the
wine is as well as make accurate pronouncements about the vintage at this point. Full-cellaring does not
compromise the life of the wine in the bottle. On the contrary, bottling wine in a reductive state denies the wine
important chemical reactions, like necessary enzyme activity, and prevents the wine from ever becoming what it
could have been.

Fully-cellared wines are becoming increasingly scarce today as large parts of the industry embark on
campaigns aimed at convincing consumers that reductive wines exhibit acceptable taste profiles. This trend
could well have the opposite effect where flooding the market with reductive wines may drive the prices of
fully-cellared wines ever higher as they become more scarce. Inwood Estates uses only French Oak to age its
wines.