Sonoma County Red Wine: 2013 Apex from Adobe Road Winery
We moved to Sonoma with one goal in mind: to become the ultimate wine hipsters. Well, two goals: to become the ultimate wine hipsters AND drink a ton of wine from the best wineries in Sonoma. And eat a lot of good food. Fine, we have a lot of goals. Enough about our goals. We’re scouring Sonoma County for the best little known, small run wineries we can find in order to achieve the greatest virtue of hipsterdom: telling you all about the really cool places we love that you've never heard of. We’re doing this for you. Trust us.
Much to our surprise, we’ve been signing up for wine clubs left and right since we moved to Sonoma. Why? Because they often wave tasting fees, they give members a discount on wine purchases, and, sometimes, they’ll give you access to small lot wines that aren’t available for purchase by the general public. While we’re living in Sonoma, we’ve decided to really dig into the offerings of the wineries we like. Wine clubs help us do that.
Let’s get to the point. We visited Adobe Road Winery’s tasting room recently, and were sufficiently impressed to sign up for their wine club. Boy are we glad we did. We picked up our first shipment a couple of days ago, and it contained a really beautiful red blend: the 2013 Apex. We’re pretty sure 2013 is the first vintage and, at 253 cases, it's a small production run.
It’s a Cab blend with Syrah, Grenache and Petit Verdot. It’s a dark, arterial violet in color. There are cherries, milk chocolate & hazelnut on the nose. Think Nutella & crushed berries. Cherries, currants, vegetation (like fresh picked field greens) and a touch of coriander on the tongue. Sage and well done steak on the finish. It’s medium bodied with a silky smooth mouth feel. This is a young wine, but it was perfect from the moment we pulled the cork. Absolutely excellent. We’d say the 2013 Apex is better than any of the red wine’s we tasted in the Adobe tasting room, and all of those were pretty damn good.
At $78, Apex is a bit out of our comfort zone. Normally we wouldn’t consider buying a bottle. But it was part of our wine club shipment, so it’s basically free, right? If you’re able to fit this into your budget, we highly recommend it. It’s one of the better wines we’ve had in this price range.
By the time you read this the Adobe Road Winery tasting room might be in their new location. You can read all about it here. You can learn more about their wines at https://www.adoberoadwines.com/.
