Eat Dirt, Drink Bone

In wine writer Natalie MacLean's new book, Red, White and Drunk All Over, she describes a visit to Chequera Vineyard in Paso Robles with Randall Grahm's (Bonny Doon) roving vineyard manager, Nicole Walsh.

Walsh kneels and digs her fingers into the soil.  "Smell this," she says.  I squat down beside her and put my nose to the handful.  The rich dirt has a voluptuous savory-sweet aroma.  I have a strange craving to eat it.  I can almost feel the ground beneath me seething with microorganisms groping in the dark. 

Fortunately, Dover Canyon fans can taste the same sweet-savory dirt in our far more tasty White Bone, a blend of viognier and roussanne.  (Chequera viognier is about 50% of the blend). We have been buying viognier from Chequera Vineyard since 1996.  For those of you familiar with Highway 46 West, Chequera (Spanish for 'checkbook') is the steeply terraced vineyard adjacent to Sycamore Herb Farm, nestled in the verdant and wind-swept Templeton Gap.

The name "White Bone' is a double entendre, referring obliquely to our red wine logo, a tongue-lolling St. Bernard, but also to the ancient seabed and calcium-rich soils studded with marine fossils that comprise our vineyard soils, and the soils of our source vineyards. 

Unlike some viognier vineyards, which lean heavily toward flavors of ripe pineapple and island fruits, the Chequera fruit is consistently lighter in color, creamy in texture, and very floral.  In our blending trials for the 2005 vintage, we tasted each wine on its own and in various combinations.  Roussanne as a varietal has a heavy unctuous texture and a spectrum of melon flavors; it is heavy and gentle on the palate.  In the 2005 'White Bone' the floral creaminess of the Chequera vineyard, combined with the rich texture and melon profile of the roussanne creates a crisp white blend with toned down viognier ebulliance and brighter melon flavors, like zipping a little Meyer lemon juice over a honeydew melon.

So don't eat dirt . . . just savor a White Bone.