Grape: Garnacha, Graciano
Region: Lodi, California, United States

Distributor's Notes:

"Winemaker John Donaghue was born in San Francisco and grew up in Marin. In 2010 he quit his job as a building engineer taking care of high rise office buildings in San Francisco to go live with Gideon and Saron at Clos Saron in the Sierra Foothills of California for harvest and had an incredible experience. He returned for harvest in 2011 and made his first wine, a Merlot/Cabernet blend with loads of plums and a strong acid spine. John has since worked in a shared space on Treasure Island and focuses on minimal intervention wines - ambient yeasts/MLF, no additives other than a little sulfur (he thinks mousiness and acetobacter is scary tbh), no fining/filtering, and neutral barrel aging. He generally tries to avoid winemaking techniques that speak more of the technique than to the grape/terroir (for example, carbonic fermentation). He aims to make enjoyable table wines that you want to drink while having a good time with friends, that support and enhance the experience instead of stealing the spotlight. He calls them “second look” wines - you have your first sip and like it, and somewhere on the 3rd or 4th sip you stop for a second and go “Ooh, that’s really nice!” and then go on to have a good time. The hands on the labels are all unique to the bottling are all friends (or in the case of my Cab/Merlot, John and his girlfriend), and they’re all drawn by a good family friend. She was a friend of John's grandmother and turns 95 in 2020 and paints beautiful watercolors. I’m pretty sure most of John's mom's side of the family has either an original painting or at least some of her postcards in their houses. Her name is Carol Lutz if you want to check out some of her paintings. Oh, and the writing is her handwriting as well!"