Welcome to

The Cult of Blends

Experience

“Just as I like to cook meals with more than one ingredient, I like to make wines from more than one grape variety.”
-Winemaker Matt Trevisan

We focus exclusively on blends at Linne Calodo. This is how wine has always been made Europe, and how wine used to be made in California, before the consumer was trained to seek out single-grape names like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay.

Blends aren’t the most commercially viable way to sell wine. It’s much easier to sell a “Cabernet Sauvignon” than a Cabernet blend called “The Martian.” But we don’t make our wines for the masses, we make them for people in the know. People like you. Welcome to what we call the “Cult of Blends.”

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Why Blends?

For Matt, it’s simple—blending provides the best opportunity to create a wine that hits all of the notes: complexity, mouthfeel, flavor and balance. If a wine needs more tannin or acid or texture, he achieves it by blending different grapes together instead of artificially manipulating the wine with additives and shortcuts.

This means that you get a unique, naturally complex and honestly made wine that tastes like no other.

Problem Solved

For example, our 2022 Problem Child is a blend of Zinfandel (65%) with Carignan (14%), Mourvèdre (12%) and Syrah (9%). Paso Robles Zinfandel is bright and delicious but it can also be a bit lean in mouthfeel. “I often look for Syrah and Mourvèdre to bring balance to Zinfandel’s exuberance,” Matt says. “Syrah adds mid-body while Mourvèdre brings an earthy character that cuts against the fruitiness and cinches it all together.”

What’s in a Name?

Wines named after grapes, such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, are known as “varietal wines.” They must contain 75% to 100% of that grape in order to carry the name. So what happens when you blend a bunch of different grape varieties into a single wine, with none accounting for 75% of the volume? You get creative—which is how we landed on our iconic blend names like Overthinker, Nemesis, Problem Child, The Martian and Rising Tides.

How It Started

It all goes back to the very beginning of Matt’s winemaking career: “I saw that a lot of varietal wines were being manipulated with acidulation, de-acidulation, aggressive fining and other change agents—that was how you made wine, by adjusting the chemistry to achieve a certain mouthfeel or structure. I knew that I could do better by blending.”

How It’s Going

Our story is now 25 years deep, and here’s what leading wine critic Eric Guido of Vinous recently had to say about Linne Calodo: “Winemaker Matt Trevisan approaches his work with an engineer’s mind, a naturalist’s heart and a farmer’s soul…This is one of the most exciting portfolios I tasted from Paso Robles. The wines are sleek and energetic, poised, with a mineral and acid core that keeps the palate engaged.”

One More Thing…

Linne Calodo wines come from our own estate vineyards in the westside Willow Creek District of Paso Robles. These vineyards are farmed with what Matt calls ‘nature positive’ practices that emphasize biodiversity, native lifeforms, species coexistence and resource conservation. Just as Matt likes to achieve natural quality through blending, he applies the same mindset to growing his grapes—letting the land speak authentically through the wines.

Cherry Red

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Overthinker

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Rising Tides

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Nemesis

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Bottle Club

Enjoy Our Club Experience

An encounter allotted to the few. As a member of the Experience at Linne Calodo, you gain access to a select group, a society invited to taste and discover that which others never will.

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