2021 Teeter-Totter Proprietary Red Wine Willow Creek District Paso Robles 750 ml

If you were going to design a region for producing intensely colored, intensely flavored red wines from scratch, you’d probably end up with something that looks a lot like Paso Robles’ Willow Creek District.

Like in much of Paso, the afternoons there are warm and filled with sunshine, allowing vines to create plenty of energy to drive ripeness. Willow Creek is blessed with limestone soils—a rarity in the Golden State—which help preserve acidity and brightness in the wine. It’s also buffeted by breezes from the Pacific, which thicken grape skins. That promotes intensity in color and flavor, and makes sure wines stay fresh.

The combination of those factors mean that winemakers can afford to let their bunches hang out on the vine until flavors and tannins reach a luscious maturity—confident in the knowledge that the resulting wines will have the elegance and balance to tame the powerful flavors. It’s how nearby wineries like Saxum built long wait-lists and $200 price-tags, and what drew Benoît Touquette to the region.

When Touquette left his home in Bordeaux for California’s Cabernet epicenter, he aimed for the top, so he positioned himself deftly alongside Andy Erickson at Ovid and Screaming Eagle. He and his mentor Michel Rolland—the world-famous consulting winemaker whose name is on 100-pointers by Harlan, Bond, and Araujo—remain close to this day, something that shows in the high scores Touquette’s wines garner—and in this edition of Teeter-Totter.

Adding Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvèdre to the base of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon results in a wine that’s 100% Benoît, but is also unique compared to anything else he’s released before. Phenomenal.