Newfound, Mourvedre, 'Shake Ridge Vineyard'

I’ve always had the feeling that Mourvèdre belongs in California in a way that many of the world’s great red wine varieties never will. Few grapes are better equipped to translate the state’s dry hillsides, blazing sunlight, cool nighttime air, and aromatic chaparral into something this vivid, savory, and unmistakably Californian. Yet Mourvèdre remains strangely peripheral here—too frequently relegated to a supporting role in Rhône blends, where its structural depth and earthy perfume are appreciated but rarely given the opportunity to speak alone. Today’s 2022 Newfound Mourvèdre from Shake Ridge Vineyard makes the case for treating it far more seriously. This is not simply a successful imitation of Bandol, nor another ripe Sierra Foothills red built around mass and alcohol. It is a wonderfully distinctive, definitively Californian mountain wine: fragrant, savory, and profoundly expressive of place—a bottle that seems to capture my home state’s wild interior landscape more convincingly than almost any variety grown here.

Newfound is the work of Matt Naumann and Audra Chapman, two wine-industry veterans whose story is unusually grounded in patience, hard work, and agricultural conviction. Matt arrived in California without a family winery, inherited vineyard, or financial backing, learning the business from the ground up through vineyard labor before spending nearly a decade at Failla, where he absorbed a philosophy centered on meticulous farming and restrained, site-driven winemaking. In 2016, he and Audra purchased a rugged forty-acre property in the Sierra Foothills, removed its conventionally farmed vines, and began rebuilding the land as an organically cultivated family estate. While waiting for those young vineyards to mature, they established Newfound through a handful of exceptional growers who shared their vision. The resulting wines have never felt like placeholders. Instead, they form one of California's most coherent arguments that generosity of fruit and transparency of terroir are not opposing ideas. Through thoughtful farming, native fermentations, restrained extraction, and minimal cellar manipulation, Newfound consistently produces wines that speak more about vineyards than winemakers.

Few vineyards reward that philosophy more completely than Shake Ridge Ranch. Situated roughly 2,000 feet above sea level near the historic Gold Rush town of Sutter Creek, the vineyard occupies forty-six organically farmed acres spread across steep, undulating hillsides of remarkable geological diversity. Italian immigrants first cultivated this land during the nineteenth-century mining era before it returned to pasture for nearly eighty years. Its modern chapter began in 2003 when legendary viticulturist Ann Kraemer transformed the property into one of California's most fascinating vineyard projects. Rather than imposing a single formula across the ranch, Kraemer matched each slope, elevation, and soil type with the variety best suited to express it. The result is a breathtaking patchwork of decomposed granite, quartz, schist, volcanic material, and iron-rich clay—conditions that consistently produce wines with extraordinary aromatic complexity and unmistakable mineral definition. Today, Shake Ridge has become one of California's most sought-after vineyard sources, supplying fruit to many of the state's most thoughtful small producers, yet it somehow continues to improve with every passing vintage.

Mourvèdre may be the vineyard's most compelling interpreter. A famously late-ripening Mediterranean variety, it demands abundant sunshine and an exceptionally long growing season, yet unlike many heat-loving grapes, it possesses the remarkable ability to preserve freshness, aromatic precision, and structural tension even at full maturity. Properly grown, Mourvèdre offers one of wine's most fascinating aromatic vocabularies: black cherry, plum skin, dried rose petals, violet, sage, black pepper, smoked herbs, licorice, leather, and the unmistakable scent of sun-baked earth after a dry summer afternoon. More importantly, it delivers these flavors without ever feeling heavy or exaggerated. It has an almost paradoxical ability to combine density with energy, power with elegance. In California's finest sites, it does not merely tolerate the climate—it explains it.

The 2022 Newfound Shake Ridge Vineyard Mourvèdre captures every one of those qualities with remarkable confidence. Beautifully translucent in the glass despite its concentration, it opens with soaring aromas of Rainier and black cherry, wild raspberry, dried violet, mountain sage, black licorice, cracked pepper, warm granite, and chaparral. The palate is simultaneously generous and remarkably focused, layering vibrant red and black fruit over a framework of fine-grained tannins and cool mineral tension that steadily builds toward an exceptionally long, savory finish filled with cherry skin, iron, herbs, and crushed stone. Every sip seems to gain momentum rather than weight. Serve it around 62°F in a generous Burgundy stem and give it twenty to thirty minutes of air. Alongside a slow-braised lamb shoulder scented with rosemary, garlic, anchovy, and black olives, this becomes one of those unforgettable meals where food, wine, and landscape seem to tell exactly the same story.