âmevive "Cariño" 2023 Red Wine Los Olivos District

750ml bottle

11.6% abv

Bright yet moutfilling, exceptionally balanced. Barely ripe dark berry, tart with a nice little grippy finish! 

âmevive
Pronunciation: "ahm-veev"
Translation: soulful, lively soul, living soul;
• the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments;
• high-mindedness; noble warmth of feeling, spirit or courage;
• the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity and separate from the body.

“We are proud to lovingly tend some of the oldest vines planted and still in production in Santa Barbara County. We are committed to beyond-organic farming, embracing the native ecology, integrating animals, and walking our vineyard rows daily. We believe that unmanipulated wines with energy and a sense of place only come with a deep connection to the land.”

Cariño is a coferment of the Pesquera Tempranillo and Graciano from the late 90’s plantings at Ibarra-Young. The Tempranillo grows beautifully here. In Los Olivos District AVA, Tempranillo grows easily, is very drought resistant, and always wins the beauty contest. These vines clearly want to be here! Cariño translates to ‘darling’ in Spanish, an indication of how the two varieties complement each other in bottle. 

Tempranillo is always the first to ripen at Ibarra-Young. We harvested a few tons of this Pesquera clone to kick off our 2023 vintage. We processed the Tempranillo using about 40% whole cluster at the winery. Seven days after the Tempranillo harvest, we picked a few rows of Graciano to destem on top of the Tempranillo ferment. Graciano adds the acid backbone to Cariño, something Tempranillo doesn’t typically have on its own. After pressing the ferment gently in the press after about 16 days, Cariño aged in neutral French oak barrels until a month before bottling. The barrels were racked up to tank, and the wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered in July of 2024.