2016 Big Basin Vineyards Homestead California 750 ml

Superstar winemaker Bradley Brown lined up his all-time favorite mountain sites to assemble this Côtes du Rhône blend, a masterclass in mountain viniculture. Brilliant and bold, plump with ripe red raspberry and juicy red cherry, it’s a plush, mouth-filling 93-point red you want to pull the cork on right at clock-out time on Friday.

This 2016 Homestead belongs squarely in the $40+ category, yet we have it by the bottle at 25% off, just $26.99 —an outstanding value with 93-point praise from Vinous head honcho Antonio Galloni, who called it “super-delicious” and “bold, juicy and super-expressive, with terrific fruit purity and tons textural resonance.”

Galloni went on to rave, “Proprietor Bradley Brown crafts some of the most compelling, small-production artisan wines in California’s Central Coast,” adding, “with each passing year, the wines are more refined and polished, making Big Basin one of the most dynamic up and coming wineries in the state.”

This wine is practically a window into Galiban Mountain and Santa Cruz terroir, with a vein of crushed rock minerality—a signature effort from Big Basin that captures why robust Rhône blends are some of the hottest ticket items coming out of California today, and Big Basin easily rivals Rhône-styled heavy-hitters like Lasseter and Stolpman. 

Seeing Bradley Brown on the street, you’d peg him for the farmer he is. Dirt-stained blue jeans, sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned, wiry forearms, a battered Carhartt vest and a warm simplicity mark him as a man of the soil. He was one of the early generations of vintners to tap into the incredible potential of the Santa Cruz Mountains, painstakingly planting his Rattlesnake Rock Estate in 2000 with the help of John Alban, one of the Central Coast’s original Rhône Rangers.

It’s easy to see why Santa Cruz was at first overlooked in preference for places like Napa and Sonoma. Winemaking here is a battle against the elements; only a fraction of the AVA’s rugged land is dedicated to vines, much the rest largely impassable due to impenetrable forests and rocky cliffs and ravines. Yet the vineyards that have managed to flourish—sommeliers call them “islands in the sky”—are now recognized as world-class, with Galloni asserting: “If I had to name the greatest estates in California, at least two, possibly three, would come from the Santa Cruz Mountains.”

For the 2016 blend, Brown sourced the Syrah and Grenache from old vines at his estate vineyard and from Coastview Vineyard, a stunning site at 2,200 feet in elevation that captures the limestone and granite finesse of the Gabilan Mountains. Chalone Vineyard, another stand-out from the same range, provides rustic, full-bodied Mourvèdre, while the Carignane hails from 85-year-old vines. All of it is expressed with a stunning freshness and purity thanks to native yeast and whole-cluster fermentation and aging in neutral French oak barrels. 

Making a wine this fun is serious business, and Brown pulls it off like few others.