by Tom Hill

A self-admitted wine geek, Tom lives in Northern New Mexico and works as a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing numerical neutron transport & large scale code development. He has been tasting wines since 1971, participates locally with a couple of large tasting groups in his area, and is practically a fixture at most California wine festivals, such as the Hospice du Rhône, Rhône Rangers, and ZAP. Other interests: Tom is heavily into competitive sport fencing (foil & epee), biking, cooking, basketball, skiing, backpacking, mountain climbing.

Afore the winemaker's lunch Thurs at Hospice du Rhone, 2002, I thought I'd stop by Mat Garretson's new digs out on 46E in Paso to take a look/see and try some wines. It was not what I expected. It has a high-tech/StarWars look from the outside, but it's an obvious/working winery on the inside.  Beating me there was Howard&Rhoda Sherry, Jeff Pfohl, and Shirene LeClere. It provided me with the perfect opportunity to model my HdR'02 bowling uniform, created for me by  Bernie Roth. Mat and Amie were suitably impressed/apalled. The rest of my group in the  tasting room pretended not to know me. The Neo-Cod codpiece won appropriately envious looks throught the rest of the day when it was seen. Sharing the facility w/ Mat are JustinSmith/SaxumWines, Cris Cherry/VillaCreekrestaurant, and Ken Winchester. That had done an hospitality tasting that previous afternoon for the early HdR arrivees, but I was still down South in the SantaYnez Valley.  

Mat and Amie's wines:

1. Garretson Winery Fralich Vineyard Viognier (RS: 1.6%) 2001: Very fragrant/lush pear/Viognier nose; off-dry spicy lush/ripe/pear/Viognier loads of Viognier fruit flavor; long/soft pear/Viognier quite spicy finish; a classic DollyParton Viognier with loads of fruit.
2. Garretson Winery Roussanne (14.2%; Westerly and Stolpman vnyds) 2001: Med.gold color; lovely very ripe/rotted apple/honeysuckle rather floral/perfumed nose; tart lush/floral/ perfumed/honeysuckle quite spicy w/ good acidity & balance; lots of ripe Roussanne fruit but bright & zippy.
3. Garretson Winery Celedih Rose 2000: Light salmon color; lovely pure/spicy/cranberry/fragrant nose; dry very spicy/cranberry/floral flavor; med.long spicy/cranberry finish; great summertime/fun drinking; everything a rose should be and then some.
4. Garretson Winery Glimigrim (Syrah/Mourvedre/Grenache) 2000: Med.color; rather strong tobaccoy/ Rhonish/pungent interesting nose; tart/dusty Rhonish/tobaccoy light toasty/oak flavor; med.long toasty/pungent/Rhonish/tobaccot finish w/ light tannins; very attractive Rhone blend w/ lots of FrenchRhone character.
5. Garretson Winery Fralich Vineyard Syrah (13.0%) 1999: Med.dark color; rather toasty/roasted some blackberry/Syrah nose; soft very roasted/toasty/charred/pungent/smokey strong blackberry/ Syrah flavor; lots of Rhone character.
6. Garretson Basetti Vineyard Syrah (HdR auction lot) 2000: Very dark color;

TomHill