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2005 Vina Santurnia

One of our favorite stores for buying wine is The Wine House on Cotner in West Los Angeles. We like it because the prices and selection are great, the staff is knowledgable, it’s close to home (which in LA is a bigger deal than it ought to be), and we can always order more of whatever we fall in love with.

The first time that happened, we fell in love with the 2004 Vina Santurnia, a delicious wine from Rioja. At $10.99 a bottle, we didn’t even hesitate to order a case. Mitch is a big Pinot Noir fan, I’m a big Cabernet Sauvignon fan, and this wine satisfied both of us. We both like that it’s smooth and has a nice mouthfeel, a barely-berry flavor in a medium-bodied, dry red wine. We ordered a case of course, after we cleaned out the remaining five bottles they had in stock. Except we still haven’t invested in proper wine storage and the last few bottles started to get a little… negative… before we finished the case.

Nonetheless, we happily drank the remainder and went back to The Wine House to purchase some more. Except now they were onto the 2005 vintage. I’d been doing research and learning that a 2004 Whatchyacallit isn’t going to be the same as a 2005 Whatchyacallit unless we’re talking about Champagne. So we sent up a test balloon and only bought a few bottles of the 2005. Good thing! We didn’t love it as much as we loved the 2004.

Until today that is! I have this not-so-secret love affair with Garlic Triscuit (pronounced tris-kwee in our household). I also love Garlic Jack cheese. Well, in fact, I like nearly all foods with garlic in them, including raw garlic which grosses everyone out and is neither here nor there. Anyway, I had a lovely snack of Garlic Jack on Garlic Triscuit this afternoon, and opened a bottle of the 2005 Vina Santurnia to enjoy with it. And enjoy I did! The pairing of food and wine seems like an academic pursuit to me, until the magic happens like it did today.

On the label
Rioja – Type of wine named after the region of La Rioja in Spain
Denominacion de Origen Calificada – Spain’s way of telling you this wine comes from a top-quality wine region
Vina Santurnia – The winery
Crianza – This means it spent one year in an oak barrel
Varietal – 100% Tempranillo

For about a year now, I’ve been a happy member of Fiddlehead Winery’s Frequent Fiddle wine club. I joined the club after visiting 20 or so wineries and tasting rooms in the Santa Ynez Valley area… a favorite spot of mine.

After a full day of tasting at some great wineries, and some not-so-great wineries, we landed in the wine-ghetto of Lompoc, CA to find out if Fiddlehead was as good as its reputation. It was. And having tasted a lot of wine in the area, this was the first winery that had a wine club I wanted to join (and my husband Mitch agreed!).

Truth be told, I’m still a happy member, except that when my newest shipment arrived, it was no longer an exciting adventure. I’d already tried (and drank three bottles each of) both the Goosebury (Goosie) Sauvignon Blanc from Santa Rita Hills and the Oldsville Reserve Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley (pronounced Will-amm-it, dammit). I like both of these wines very much, and feel they’re a good value, but there are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of wineries in California alone and I have more wine adventures to partake of!

So now I’m going to figure out which wine club to join next, and if you’ll let me, I’ll take you along on the adventure. Hopefully you’ll be inspired to find the perfect wine club (and wines) for yourself!

If you want to try Fiddlehead, you can find places to buy it online.