2022 Birichino 'Besson Vineyard' Grenache, Central Coast   

The Besson Family’s old Grenache vineyard presented a completely different calculus. While the 2018 seemed to us on par with several other excellent years, it has proved the best received vintage by the press. 2018 was lithe, lively, ethereal. Then 2019 rolled around. It will be remembered as a quite nice if inconsistent vintage - better here, less exciting there. Temperatures soared significantly higher than in 2018. Quite frankly, only a few wines from 2019 will go down as the exemplars of their type when the grandkids discuss wines from the Two Thousand Teens. HOWEVER, these vines produced one of the finest wines ever to emerge from our cellar, albeit in smallish quantities.