2015 Tooth and Nail Wines The Stand 750 ml

For Fans of Orin Swift and Three Wine Co

If your predilection is for tremendous concentration, chewy texture, and hedonistic polish, we’ve got a winner for you: Tooth and Nail’s 2015 The Stand. Wine Enthusiast pinned on 92 points, citing the “mouthcoating,” and “powerful” structure with “black-cherry-laced chocolate-cake flavors.” Similar California red blends have been making a number of big appearances among top-ranked American wines. The cult favorite Orin Swift Machete was #6 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2016. And a few years before that, in 2012, the Shafer “Relentless” took the list’s #1 spot. For fans of Petite Sirahs from Three Wine Company, Orin Swift, and Sine Qua Non, Tooth and Nail’s 2015 The Stand is a no-brainer. 

Petite Sirah is dark in color, muscular, and tannic when grown on limestone and granite soils. But when the fruit is drawn from mature vines planted on well-drained, sandy-gravelly soils, the tannins soften, making for voluptuous reds with Cabernet-like concentration and Northern Rhône spice.

Rob Murray and Tooth and Nail winemaker Jeremy Leffert are experts at attaining such an effect. Murray owns Foremost Wine Company, one of Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 Wine Restaurants, and around 1,000 acres in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo through his vineyard management company.

For this release, he and Leffert selected the best fruit from the Tolliver Ranch Vineyard. There, sandy soils rich in decomposed granite infuse wines with chiseled acidity, while the nearby Estrella River tempers the region’s dry heat, leading to a long growing season in which grapes can gather rich, wild-berry concentration. The result—winning 92 points from Wine Enthusiast—is a gentle monster that will delight lovers of California Petite Sirah and fans of Orin Swift and Matt Cline’s Three Wine Company.