Bang for Your Wine Buck
Cline Cellars consistently offers good quality at a fair price
Posted: Jul 25, 2012 1:00pm ET
What's not to like?
That's a phrase I use when it comes to describing good wines that sell for a
reasonable price. There aren't many California wineries that can consistently offer quality value wines across the board. I've blogged about Bogle and Columbia Crest as
part of an ongoing series on labels that overdeliver on quality relative to
price, and Cline Cellars is in that same league.
Search Wine Spectator's database of Cline
reviews and rarely do the wines score below 84 on our 100-point scale, and most
sell for $25 or less. Three recent releases stand out. The Zinfandel Sonoma County 2010 (89, $20) is a
zesty red, loaded with soft and jammy fruit, while the Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast Cool Climate 2009 (88, $17) is that rare Pinot
value, offering a full body and a minerally finish. Then there's the Mourvèdre Contra Costa County
Ancient Vines 2010 (88, $16), which is a supple and generous Rhône-style red with
notes of wild berry and mint.
Fred Cline started his
winery back in 1982 in a relatively obscure place, the town of Oakley in
the California delta region east of San Francisco. The area is home to some of
the oldest vineyards in California. It's not unusual to find vines that were
planted 80 to 100 years ago. Cline farms about 140 acres of mostly Mourvèdre,
Carignane and Zinfandel there, and the climate and terrain are distinctive.
Summer days get toasty warm but evenings typically turn cool on the delta, and
the soil is deep and unusually sandy.
Cline moved the winery to
Sonoma's Carneros region in 1991 and expanded into cool-region grapes like
Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which are grown on the winery's 350-acre estate and
over the mountain in the Petaluma Gap region of the Sonoma Coast. Yet Zinfandel
remains the winery's calling card and dominates production.
Veteran winemaker Charlie
Tsegeletos and his crew produce a lot of wine—there are nearly 150,000 cases of the 2010 California Zinfandel
(83, $12) alone—so bottles are readily available around the country.
With so much mass-produced drivel on the retail wine shelves, it's good to know
there are some value brands worth seeking out.
Have you tried Cline wines? Are there other value brands
that you think overdeliver?
Tim,
Cline made a Vin Blanc field blend that sold for under $10 - always loved it. The first Mourvedre I ever tasted (and really enjoyed) was a 1991 Cline "clearance" priced at $11 (back in 1996). Their Zins have always been solid.
Vina Santa Rita makes excellent young reds (Carmenere, Malbec) for under $10 out here in the East.