Shannon Family of Wines, High Valley (Lake County, California) 2023

 From Lake County – the next stop north as California’s wine juggernaut as responds to climate change – comes this delightful and distinctive pink in a lovely bottle that all gets a bit tangled up in its mother vine of a back story.  Purportedly, the vineyard has a 150 year-old-mother vine that a family brought from Croatia, the source of the budding prodigy that produced this wine.  However, the mother vine is Cinsault, not known for growing in the Balkans, and there is also a majority of Grenache in the bottle.  But, what the hey – the wine has a silky-like texture, and it tastes of sweet water purity but with a nice jolt of rich fruitiness in the finish.