Taken From Granite
- Sierra Foothills, California, United States
Gideon Beinstock has become known for his amazing Clos Saron wines, but the history goes back much further than that. A long and winding road from growing up in Israel, an artist’s life of painting in Paris, helping to plant the Renaissance Vineyards in the 1970’s, international wine sales, and finally finding his way into winemaking at the very same vineyards he had planted almost two decades earlier. It was there at Renaissance that he began learning his craft and made the first of his incredible wines.
Gideon left Renaissance in the late 1990’s to found Clos Saron, just a few miles down the road, but has always felt a connection to Renaissance, both as a piece of his history, and also as a totally unique and special terroir.
Which brings us to the present: Gideon was given the opportunity to reclaim some of the greatest wines he made during his time at Renaissance! These wines have never left the winery and have been aging perfectly, undisturbed for the past two decades.
The cuvees that were hand-picked by Gideon are showing outstandingly right now, and should continue to age gracefully for years to come.
Notes from Gideon:
Pre-1995, like all self-respecting Cali wineries, Renaissance was producing an ‘Estate’ and a ‘Reserve’ Cabernet.
In 1995, I broke the Reserve down into three cuvées, with more specific expressions:
1. “Première Cuvée”, a varietal Cabernet Sauvignon (min. 75%), was meant to continue in the tradition of the older Reserve tradition of long lasting, powerful, blockbuster wines.
2. “Claret Prestige”, a non-varietal wine, was meant to be the most elegant, aromatically complex, harmonious wine we could achieve every vintage by the blending of (mainly) Bordeaux varieties.
3. “Vin de Terroir”, 100% varietal Cabernet Sauvignon, selected every vintage from (either the same or any) specific micro-site in the vineyard for its clearly distinctive expression of terroir.
The names we chose for the Taken From Granite wines are related to the original stylistic goal of each cuvée:
-“Village” is the ‘Estate’ made from all the various slopes combined.
-“Soleil" is the “Première Cuvée”
-“Élegance" is the “Claret Prestige”.
About 400 cases of each was produced every vintage between 1995 and 2002 (with a few exceptions). All the grapes for these wines came from a few vineyard sites (we referred to them as ‘slopes’), which were determined as the best we had (our “Reserve Slopes” - mainly Slope 1, 16, and 21).
***The “Vin de Terroir” may or may not appear under the TFG label, as of now it is unreleased and TBD***