2015 Villa Creek Cellars Willow Creek Cuvee Paso Robles 750 ml

Châteauneuf-du-Pape Meets California

We can sing Villa Creek’s praises all day, but we’ll leave you with this quote from Vinous: “There’s no question that recent vintages here have seen a steady rise in quality as well as energy and I’d confidently place this winery among the upper tier of the Central Coast.”

Time to carve out some space for today’s 2015 Villa Creek “Willow Creek Cuvée,” a classic GSM-blend (Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre) that earned a 95-point “Editors’ Choice” award from Wine Enthusiast and landed at the #27 spot in the magazine’s Top 100 Wines of 2018 listing. Inky dark, loaded with silken black fruits, garrigue, brown spices, a hint of cocoa, and candied violets. 

The Willow Creek AVA in Paso Robles is home to the region’s greatest terroirs—a patchwork of valleys that criss-cross one another from 960 feet elevation, interrupted by jagged, steep-rising mountains, which carve out incredible micro-climates from vineyard to vineyard, some rising up to 1,900 feet. No wonder producers like Turley, L'Aventure, Daou, Saxum, and Linne Calodo all either own vineyards, or source fruit from the AVA. The Templeton Gap is the secret ingredient—this corridor sucks in cool Pacific Ocean air, creating tremendous diurnal shifts which lead to incredibly complex wines.

Villa Creek is a critical darling, selected by Robert Parker in a guest article on Food & Wine as a star of the region—“one of my favorite wineries in Paso Robles,” he wrote, and that was nearly a decade ago. More recently, Parker’s one-time protégé, Antonio Galloni of Vinous has warned readers that if they haven’t yet sampled Villa Creek’s efforts, they’re missing out on the best of Paso Robles.

Winemaker Cris Cherry is leading the efforts at Villa Creek, and just how does he turn out wines of depth, complexity, and elegance? After employing the best practices in the vineyard, he treats grapes to a real Southern Rhône winemaking script: wines are aged in large low-impact vessels, like concrete tanks, which, according to an article in Vinous, “allows for slower and gentler extraction and more delicate character in the final wines.” Vinous also notes that Cherry uses more whole clusters when it makes sense “in an effort to impart greater aromatic complexity and spiciness to his wines.”

Depending on where vines are planted, daytime highs can reach scorching temperatures, but nights are quite cool, which helps keep acids firm and vibrant. Villa Creek’s “Willow Creek Cuvee” comes from three uniquely cool spots, ranging from 1,250 feet up to 1,800 feet, where ocean breezes are not as intense as the more aggressive Mistral winds of the Southern Rhône. Still, grapes rooted in calcareous clay and limestone soils are refreshed and energized by the more moderate growing conditions, yielding to a beautiful wine that offers the structure of a Southern Rhône Cru, balanced by the ripe, fruit intensity of Paso. Think: Châteauneuf-du-Pape meets California.

In the ever-shifting world of grape growing, those winemakers who are forever in pursuit of balance know when they’ve hit a home run. On the buying side, we know when we’ve hit the jackpot—Villa Creek is it.