Made Up Names Can Make For Great Wines
The woman at Tamas Estates’ tasting room was very frank.
“Andiamo isn’t a varietal or style. We made up the word.”
Why? It has to do with certain California wine label laws that state when a winery can (and when they cannot) list a grape varietal on a wine’s label. Seventy-five percent of a wine’s content must be of the stated varietal, assuming there is one at all.
Tamas’ “Andiamo” is 50% Zinfandel, 47% Sangiovese, and 3% Petite Sirah. So while it isn’t 75% any one grape (and hence, has a made-up name) it is 100% delectable.
As a friend likes to put it, “that’s some good juice.”
The nose on the Andiamo is very earthy and rich, it smells like an orchard in the summer, you can almost smell tree bark in there (oh yeah… the wine is fermented in oak barrels, isn’t it?). There’s also a hint of warm spice, like nutmeg or cardamom or something similar.
On the palate, the wine is rich and lustrous. Notes of coffee and chocolate mix with a very dark and hearty raspberry note. The wine feels like drinking velvet.
This is not to say it’s anything like, for instance, Porto or Madeira. It’s not thick or sticky feeling, or really all that sweet. But the flavors are big and bold and quite impressive. Recommended.
Verdict: B+
A Fruit Bomb From Livermore
I’ve reviewed a couple wines from Tamas already (barbera and sangiovese) and really liked them both. So when the gang headed out to do our big tasting day in the Livermore Valley, we had to put Tamas on our itinerary. I’m glad we did, as a couple of the wines that we tasted that day topped my list along with the Merrillie Chardonnay from Steven Kent.
This wasn’t one of them.
Not that it was an awful wine. Everything from Tamas was decent-to-excellent. But this was not for me at all.
On the nose is cherry. Very heavy cherry. So much cherry, I wondered if someone had dropped a cough drop in my glass, but no, just the zin.
The palate is no different. Huge huge cherry-centered fruit flavor. Seriously, this wine is like drinking a box of Juicy Juice. To be fair, my compatriots did not, as a whole, agree with me, and many of them liked it. But no one raved. Even if you like fruit bombs, the one-note character of this wine is still off-putting.
For the first time, I cannot recommend a Tamas wine. The Riserva is not one of their “touring” wines, as they call them, so it is not available in stores nationwide. Which is fine by me.
Verdict: C-
Si, Sangiovese, Si!
So this is my first sangiovese.
It’s my second Tamas, however, as the barbera I recently tasted was also from Tamas Estates. Again, I think my introduction to the variety excites me more than this winery, but this was a very good wine I would definitely recommend, especially at the price point ($10-$15).
The color is a brilliant ruby. Exceptionally red, but bright and not dark. No hints of brown or orange shades, just red, red, red.
On the nose are some very interesting fruit notes, primarily strawberry and blueberry, and what I believe to be plum. Notes that I am personally not very familiar with in wine, but that I found enticing nonetheless.
The wine is medium-bodied, with a clean, short finish. There is a spiciness that at first I mistook for a tannic quality, but it’s much less bitter than that, with hints of red or orange bellpepper. The mid-palate is dominated by similar fruit notes to what you find in the nose, plus some apple and pear notes. Really quite nice, a fruit-forward wine lover will feel right at home here.
All in all, a very good wine. I’m more excited than ever to branch out and try more sangiovese after this experience.
Verdict: 89/100