by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
I know very little about the Mission grape, but I tasted some Mission grape wine yesterday, courtesy of my friend Arthur Przebinda. He made all of one and a half liters of it from some grapes he sourced from some mission. I don’t know how you make such a small quantity of wine and have it turn out okay, but he did. In fact, the wine was quite good. Light body, good acidity, low in tannin, nice flavors (I thought rose petal, but Arthur disagreed with me on that).
I’ve had a few Mission grape wines over the years, and I readily admit to being surprised at how good they are. I had always assumed this must be some mediocre grape that was just an historical curiosity.
The wine certainly isn’t something you’d liken to a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, at least not the ones I’ve tasted. I would liken it most to a Sangiovese, though perhaps a little lighter. It reminded me particularly of some of the Sangiovese wines from the California Foothills, which share many of the same characteristics.
Since my education when it comes to the Mission grape is limited, I decided to GOOGLE it, and I found out some interesting things. Even though this grape had a monopoly on California wine growing during the Mission era, it now accounts for 1,000 acres, which is considerably more than I would have imagined, though still not very much. It has been traced through genetic testing to an obscure Spanish variety Listen Prieto.
It’s interesting how grapes of minor importance in Europe developed into major wine grapes here. Added to the Mission grape one could count Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, grapes that are far more important here than in their European countries of origin.
As well as being used to make dry wines, the Mission grape was used to make a brandy-fortified dessert wine called Angelico. Supposedly, this makes a very good dessert wine, though it takes quite a bit of aging.
While the Mission grape may have at one point held a monopoly on California winemaking, I don’t see any great renaissance in the offing. It is now, like many other wine grapes that have limited plantings in California, going to struggle to get any market acceptance. It belong to the “other” category, which means few people will walk into a store asking for it.
Even if it’s just an historical curiosity, it seems like people should be, well, curious, about it. After all, it was the start of the California wine industry. For several centuries, that’s all that got drunk here.
If it were total plonk, then I could see why people wouldn’t care. But it’s a legitimate wine, one that deserves to be enjoyed in its own right, and not just as an history footnote.
Hi Jeff
Glad you liked the wine. Curious how that bottle tasted the next day?
As to my success, you did like my Aglianico from two potted back-up vines as well. I attribute my successes to lots of lab work as an undergraduate Bio major. Synthesizing a few milligrams of aspirin tends to make you pedantic about details.
Here’s a plot twist for you:
The wine is from the old Mother Vine at the Mission San Gabriel Archangel. Own-rooted, no less.
Because the leaf blade does not resemble vinifera, I just returned from the post office after sending some samples to UC Davis for DNA identification.
Several of the experts at UC Davis, after seeing photos of the vines, clusters and leaves suspect that this vine is a hybrid of true Vinifera Mission and V. girdiana (the Southern California wild desert grape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_girdiana). The DNA should clarify that. Stay tuned.
Angelica, the higher-alc, sweet version of mission is made without fermentation. You might recall I had made a trial pico-lot of that but it did not turn out as well …
It is precisely out of a desire of preserving this cultivar for posterity that I am involved in several projects with the Mission grape in Southern California.
One of the best examples and a wine that had a passionate following where I used to work is Wellington Vineyard’s example labelled as Criolla from old vines planted in Sonoma Valley. Quite tasty though I don’t think they make it anymore.
Hey ck out Filippi in Cucamonga, they use alot of mission in their Sherries and Ports. Good stuff.
You may want to check out Gypsy Canyon wines from the Sta. Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County. They have a fortified dessert wine made from the Mission grape. It’s very tasty! They call it Ancient Vine Angelica from Dona Marcelina’s Vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills
still quite a few old mission vineyards left up here in Amador county….
i took some cuttings from the vinyards west if I-15 several years ago; the vinyards have since been destroyed. i live in colton now and would like to find an on-line source of a couple of mission bare root plants.