Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2018 | Iconic Matt Cline Red Blend
Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2018 pours dark purple-ruby center with violet highlights at the rim. Up-front aromas of smashed blackberry, candied raspberry, spiced plum, and dried herbs. The palate shows woodsy dried herbs with pine needles, sandalwood, and cracked pepper. Great balance and generosity, as the deep-rooted old vines show off their heritage. This wine is reminiscent of a little brother to Ridge Lytton Springs: American winemaking history that drinks well above its price point. Drink now – 2025.
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Matt’s Three Wine Old Vines Field Blend 2018 is a transportive taste of the past, bursting with ripe fruit and exotic, spice-driven complexity. In an era where machine-made wines often dominate the value sector, nothing tastes better than Matt Cline’s handmade heritage bottles. Don’t let this one sell out on you!
Contra Costa County | Source of the ‘fields’
Fields once covered Contra Costa County, an area today known better for San Francisco’s suburban sprawl. Between the high rises and strip malls, Matt Cline has been working tirelessly to maintain the vineyards that offer a window to the Contra Costa of yore. In these vineyards, there’s no dirt, no gravel, no galets roules. Everything is sand. There are no trellises, rosebushes, or mansion-like tasting rooms.
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Huge, gnarled vines the size of small trees reach up from the sand craning skyward. Notably in shapes that defy modern viticulture, and would make most Napa vineyard managers cringe. Between what passes for rows, the vines are marked Spanish Mataró, Carignan, Zinfandel, and Malvasia Nero. While planted not in blocks devoted to variety but helter-skelter in the traditional “field blend” style pioneered by early farmers across Europe.
Winemaker Matt Cline
A California native, winemaker Matt Cline knew he’d stepped onto vineyard gold when he first began cultivating the ancient vines that pepper Contra Costa County. Standing amidst vines whose trunks reach skyward from soils that look more like beach sand than fertile earth. While curving around themselves in shapes that defy trellising, irrigation, and modern viticulture as we know it. As a result, you feel like you’re standing in a window to the past.
