Friday, December 22, 2006
Three Paso Robles wines made the "Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Wines of 2006" list.
EOS' 2004 "Tears of Dew Late Harvest Moscato," a dessert wine that sells for about $22 per bottle, earned a 95-point rating from the magazine.
The review stated: "This dessert wine has pushed itself to the front of the line of California sweeties, and the '04 is a great bottling. It's enormously sweet in late-harvest character, with apricot liqueur, pineapple tart and vanilla cream flavors that are brightened and boosted with cleansing acidity."
The magazine's staff selected the wines from a pool of 8,000 selections.
Linne Calodo's 2005 Contrarian was also named to the list. The white wine sells for around $36 a bottle.
The Enthusiast review: "What a complex and interesting blend of Roussanne and Viognier. Opens with a honeyed, marzipan and almond cookie bouquet, but turns surprisingly dry and acidically crisp in the mouth, with Meyer lemon, vanilla, gingerbread and Asian spice flavors."
The Contrarian earned a 94-point rating.
Treana's 2003 Mer Soleil Vineyard Viognier-Marsanne, made with grapes from Monterey County, also made the list. The white wine sells for around $25 per bottle.
According to the Enthusiast, the 94-point wine is one of the best Rhone whites in California.
The review goes on to state:
"The '03 is an amazing wine. It displays the fresh, keen acidity of the vineyard, which grows no reds, and detonates on the palate with tremendous apricot, papaya, mango, pineapple, tangerine, peach and mineral flavors. It's basically dry, although there's a touch of botrytis honey."
Article:
Wine Enthusiast fetes three Paso winesThe Tribune, Leah Etling
Tags:
San Luis Obispo Central Coast WineLabels: Central Coast Wine, EOS Estate Winery, Linne Calodo, Paso Robles Wineries, Treana, Wine Enthusiast
Monday, December 18, 2006
At the age of 14 and 10 respectively, Frank and Phil Arciero arrived in America from Italy in the late 1930s. America was in the throes of the Depression and work was scarce, but their father had finally scraped together enough money to bring them over from Rome, where much of the family would remain until more money was raised. Frank immediately went to work digging ditches while his younger brother went to school, and gradually the Arciero family was reassembled in America, member by member, year by year.
By the time everyone had finally made it to Detroit, Frank and Phil were ready to leave and seek their fortunes as young men, and at the time, there was no better place to do it than California. The two inseparable brothers arrived in central California in 1948 and quickly launched their own construction company. In a combination of hard work, business savvy, and being in the right place at the right time, the Arciero Brothers, as they and their company came to be known, prospered well beyond their immigrant parents' dreams. Over the course of nearly forty years the two brothers build a concrete company empire that would eventually include residential and commercial construction, farming, and one of the country's most successful Indy Car racing teams.
The process of building this empire no doubt consumed all the time and energy that the brothers could muster. Those who start out with very little don't find it easy to rest on their laurels. Yet at a certain point, Frank had the time and the luxury to slow down a bit, and to begin to feel the call of some deeper family traditions that the family had left behind in the old country. Instead of fighting his way through the Emigrant Wilderness on a wagon train like the Italian immigrants to California that preceded him by 100 years, Frank fought his way through the struggles of surviving in the Depression, but like those immigrants before him, there came a time where Frank felt the need to start planting grapes.
The first parcels went into the ground in the 1980s amidst the rolling hills of Paso Robles, which reminded Frank of his childhood memories of Italy. Over the next fifteen years, Frank literally built himself a winery, from the vines in the ground to the cement of the walls.
And like all the other Arciero projects through the years, it took off with a bang. The Arciero family continued to purchase and plant vineyard land throughout the Nineties, and by 1996 they were producing enough wine under the family label that they needed to do some "brand diversification" which is a fancy name for creating different wine labels to sell different types and quality levels of wines. As part of this move, the winery brought on liquor industry veteran Kerry Vix as general manager, and distributor Vernon Underwood, and EOS Estate Winery (along with several other brands) was born.
Named after the Greek goddess of the dawn, EOS has been producing varietal wines in the Paso Robles area since 1996. Its sister brands Novella (Italian varietals) and Cupa Grandis (reserve wines) join the original Arciero Family Winery label to complete the portfolio. The wines are made by winemaker Leslie Melendez who worked her way up through the ranks to head winemaker from her beginnings in 1993 as a lab technician.
Apropos of its name, the winery harvests all its fruit before dawn, from vines that have an average age of over 20 years, planted from cuttings taken from some of the first vines planted in the area. The fruit is hand harvested and the whites are pressed in small lots with a traditional Champagne basket press.
Website:
EOS Estate WineryTags:
San Luis Obispo Central Coast WineLabels: Central Coast Wine, EOS Estate Winery, Paso Robles Wineries