2018 Isabella Francesca Malbec Petite Verdot

Tasting Notes: 

The most flattering wine of the 21st century, from Isabella Francesca Vineyard near Brentwood, in Contra Costa County, along the San Joaquin River Delta. Rihanna would drink this Petit Verdot-Malbec blend (if she could get her hands on bottles). This is one meaty red. It could cut your steak for you. Muscular. tannins underscore a kind of blue-fruit intensity with sweet spices, grilled herbs, and your favorite charcuterie infused in this full-bodied wine.

Appellation Notes: Contra Costa County AVA

We’ll never forget the first time we drove out to see vineyards in Contra Costa, located within the San Francisco Bay AVA, quite east of the city. We ate Ribeyes and baked beans at Mac’s Old House in Antioch and trekked among the vines. The AVA border begins west of the towns of Martinez and Contra Costa, where vineyards are sandwiched between apartment buildings shopping malls, and rooted along the highways that follow the Sacramento-San Joaquin inland river delta. The AVA spans east, and its northern border follows the delta past Oakley and south to Byron. In the 1890s, a host of immigrants, mostly Italian, who had come for the 1849 Gold Rush, established vineyards in the sandy banks along the delta—field blends of Alicante Bouschet, Carignane, Mataro, Petite Sirah, and most notably Zinfandel. Incredibly, some are still producing grapes today. The wines are deliciously bold with dark blue and black fruit flavors.