2018 Benevolent Neglect GSM North Coast 750 ml

This is not a wine you will find just anywhere, at least not yet. A stunning, expressive Châteauneuf-du-Pape-inspired red from our top-selling new winery of 2019, this is a smash hit from the type of winery that embodies the idea of “Small Business Saturday.” 

Benevolent Neglect is such a tiny operation, founders Matt Nagy and Ben Brenner don’t have a tasting room… so we first experienced their lineup at Matt’s kitchen table, where he reminded us that “Wine is supposed to be fun, and supposed to be shared with friends and family.” 

As we swirled this red, taking in its mélange of wild blackberry aromas tinged with smoke, savory spices, and wild herbs, “sharing” was all we could think about. As is usually the case with Benevolent Neglect’s micro-production wines, this red bursts with the $150+ quality that has made their wines staples at Michelin-starred temples of cuisine like SingleThread, The Clove Club, and Fat Duck. 

The GSM really underscores their signature style. Sweet black fruit with a gorgeous texture rides atop a brooding undercurrent of garrigue, tea leaf, mint, and black pepper. This tension rings in the glass, stretched taut between hearty earth, lively spice, and a juiciness that recalls that moment in August when we plucked our first fresh blackberries off an unsuspecting bramble and let them burst against our teeth.

Despite our pleading, all we could get from Matt and Ben was a casual shrug, and “We’ll see…” when it came time to ask for an allocation. Until this week, when we got a call from Matt:

“It can be rewarding to take wine seriously from time to time, but at the end of the day drinking wine is about enjoying a moment and place in time,” he told Master of Wine Vanessa Conlin, before offering the final cases of this stunning red as a Thank-You to Wine Access members. We’ve got 32 cases coming directly from Matt and Ben’s winery, so don’t wait.  

This Châteauneuf-du-Pape-inspired blend—Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre grown in North Coast vineyards—continues to raise the stakes of an already impressive portfolio. Since starting with a single ton of Syrah in 2013, Matt and Ben have created one of the most promising new outfits in all of American wine. 

Now, their 2018 GSM is the wine of the moment, with the smooth appeal of a runaway blockbuster and the understated loveliness of California’s most celebrated underground classics. Crafted from 50% Mourvèdre, 30% Grenache, and 20% Syrah from two different vineyards, the red explodes with silky, nuanced complexity that’s the trademark of Benevolent Neglect wines.  

Matt brings a particularly eye-popping background to the winemaking. He got his legs working alongside Napa legend Thomas Rivers Brown, making 100-point wines at Seaver Vineyards that sold for more than $400. Then he changed tack, taking a position with Steve Matthiasson at Matthiasson Wines, the vanguard of today’s non-interventionist New California movement.

Matt brings all the best aspects of those two very different perspectives to bear on the wines of Benevolent Neglect. A hands-off approach in the cellar (as their name indicates), but with the singular objective of making a wine that springs to life in the glass. 

“We do as little as we can to them,” Matt said recently on The Wine Makers podcast. “But we’re also committed to making wines that are delicious and sound and good. That’s our number one goal every year.”

Now both Matt and Ben work full-time at Matthiasson, building on their success with Benevolent Neglect as they can, lot by lot, in their spare time. 

It’s what led renowned Master of Wine Jancis Robinson to exclaim: “What a story this wine has!” Another famous Brit, the esteemed critic Jamie Goode, also recently championed these wines, calling them “beautifully harmonious.” With these two at their back, Benevolent Neglect is now positioned at the center of California wine’s surging popularity in the UK.

Matt and Ben are working toward a long-term goal of making Benevolent Neglect their full-time project. (They don’t even pay themselves at this point). When they do, we are fully confident they will be ready to take the entire global market by storm. We’re just glad we’ve already established a tight relationship with these two East Coast escapees and embraced them as true Californians. 

Buying everything they’ll sell us doesn’t hurt that relationship! But the simple fact is that we can’t recommend this wine enough.