SINE QUA NON: The 100-POINT Cult Wine That Changed California

What if we told you one of the most collectible wineries in America started with a guy making a single barrel of wine almost as a hobby? A winery where every bottle has a different name, different label, and sometimes different blend. Today we're diving into the wild story of Manfred Krenkel in Cinquannon, a genius restaurateur, baker, winemaker who achieved cult status in a world of wine collectors. But it's also a nod to his wife and business partner Elaine who held it all together when Manfred almost lost his life in a motorcycle accident. Join us for another episode of Our Poor Decisions where Stacey and Pops finally seem aligned. Hi wine lovers, welcome to another episode of Our Poor Decisions. And a lot of our viewers have requested Cinquannon which, based on what I've learned so far, is a really unique wine, right? Oh my gosh, there is so much to Cinquannon or Ciniquannon, depending on who you are and how you choose to pronounce it. First of all, there's the story of Elaine and Manfred Krenkel, which is an amazing story, I think. And then of course there's the whole story of the California cult wine movement. And then the third part that I think is really interesting is that these are not your normal California varietals, right? And so this is going to be, I think, really a fun tasting. And Stacey, what are your expectations for today's tasting? I'm excited to taste these wines and put all of that, the fun stories and the experience of it, together with the flavors. And who do you think this wine is made for? You, me, or Pops? I'd be surprised if you don't like these wines, but I personally love the Rhone varietals coming out of California. Grenache, Well, let's find out! In the 1980s and 90s, a new class of California wineries started to emerge, founded by winemakers who believed they can make world-class wines by challenging conventional wisdom. Often, they started as a small production wine, sold through closed mailing lists and poured in only a handful of high-end restaurants. And once they were discovered by critics, typically Robert Parker, they were chased by collectors who drove prices sky-high in the secondary market. In that regard, Cinquanon is one of California's true cult wineries. But there was a big difference between Manfred Krenkel and all the other winemakers. He and his wife Elaine were not making Cabernet and Napa Valley. Manfred was obsessed with Rhone varietals and started with Syrah and Grenache. The first real breakthrough came with the 1994 vintage. The Krenkels made just four and a half barrels of Syrah from Vienna seed of fruit and called it Queen of Spades. That first wine changed their lives, according to the Krenkels, turning what began as a hobby into their full-time occupation. Cinquanon quickly became one of California's most collectible wines with an endless waiting list and soaring prices. And if you check the Wine Advocates database, you will find 24 Cinquanon wines with a perfect 100-point score. Yes, you heard that right. 24 different wines scoring 100 points. Today, we're trying four wines, one white and three reds, that give us a window into the modern Cinquanon universe. And the 2018 Cinquanon 11 Confessions Vineyard Syrah is one of those 100-point wines. So I'm excited for this one because it's white wine and you know how I love white wine. But I thought that Cinquanon was known for their red wine, so I'm just a little confused. I am so impressed. And they are. They're mostly, they were first known for their Grenache and Syrah. But I really wanted to try the white. I love kicking off a tasting with whites. Bubbles would even be better. Just something with some good acidity to get your palate going. It's a great place to start. So let's take a quick look at what we're drinking. For the reds, we're starting with a 2021 Distenta White 3. I wanted to include the white in the tasting simply because I've never had one. The blend alone tells you that this is not a normal California white. 33% Chardonnay, 27% Viennais, 24% Gelber Muscataler, 12% Roussant, and 4% Petit Monsaigne. Most of the fruit comes from 11 Confessions in Santa Rita Hills, with smaller contributions from the third twin and Cumulus. It was fermented and aged in large French oak penchant in demi-mute, spent 23 months in élevage, saw long leaves aging with botanage, and was bottled unfiltered. Production was only 900 cases, with alcohol around 15.9%, which is quite high for a white wine. I think this looks like highlighter. It's so yellow. Yeah, highlighter or you need to drink some more water. Wow. Lots of vitamins and minerals. I read, or maybe it was on YouTube, that this was spent 12 to 14 months on the leaves. Can you explain what that means? I love talking about leaves. When alcohol forms, like you could take yeast and sugar, it ferments, you get leaves. This is what happens to the yeast after fermentation. That's their one job in life. I'm here to make alcohol and CO2, and then they die. Leaves are the spent yeast cells. It is that bread, doughy, brioche, toasty thing that any wine spends on the leaves. You get more and more of that. Happens in champagne. They do it a lot in red wines, but you don't notice it as much. We talk about it so much more because it really stands out a lot. The time spent on the leaves adds that buttery brioche, adds some creamy richness, makes the palate a little bit rounder. They're known for having this oily texture and really rich. Is that from that or is that from something else? I think that can be part of the texture. There's also a grape in here that really brings that to the party, which is Viognier. Anytime you talk about Viognier, you're going to have some of that really nice, rich, oily texture. Should we go ahead and snip it? All right. That sounds like a great idea. I mean, you know there are aromatic varietals in here, right? We just talked about Viognier, but there's so much more jumping out of the glass. All the flowers, all the ripe- Lemon? Lemon. Yeah, lots of lemon for sure. Stone fruit, all those apricots and nectarines, all that good stuff. All right. Well, cheers. I don't like it. It's too strong for me. Too much alcohol, I think. Oh, that was quick. That came fast. Well, it's burning my mouth right now. It is not low alcohol. That is true. And I think that is something we should probably be prepared for. I will say it tastes better when I took a smaller sip. So maybe I just had too much and was expecting. When I see a white wine, I know I'm typically going to like it. It just didn't really taste like I'm used to. But there's so much to this, right? It's kind of thick and oily and right in your face. Lees aging, Viognier ripeness, oily, all that alcohol. Yeah, this is a big wine for a white, for sure. I'm kind of on the fence still. I don't know how I feel about this. It's a crazy blend. I have no reference for this wine. I can't compare this to almost anything else. Do I think this wine is super balanced? Are all of the other things playing nicely? The alcohol is kind of screaming at me. So already that's kind of a point against it. It's not really well balanced, right? Length. Does it have a long length? And this is me using my WSET stuff, right? It's super long. It goes on forever. There's a ton of flavor. It's hanging out of my palate. Like the length of this wine is all there. Is it intense? It's super intense, right? Is that a pleasant thing? Judges are out. I wish it just had a little bit more acidity. I was going to say. I kind of feel like we're all agreeing here on this wine. Yeah. Well, what you said earlier was that they're known for the rest, right? So why don't we move on? Manfred Krenkel was not a classically trained winemaker. He was an Austrian immigrant, artist, restaurateur, bakery entrepreneur, and Rhone wine obsessive. It appears that the success of the company and restaurant, and especially La Praie Bakery, gave the Krenkels the financial footing to invest in vineyards and winemaking, and to make tiny lots of world-class Rhone-inspired wines in California. Cinquanon moved from purchased fruit to estate vineyards. The most important was 11 Confessions in Santa Rita Hills, where the Krenkels began planting in 2001, primarily to Syrah and Grenache, along with a small amount of Rousson, Vionnet, Petit Syrah, Chardonnay, and Muscat. Then came Cumulus, the Krenkels' home vineyard in Oakview near their winery. In 2010, they purchased the third twin near Los Alamos, a sandy soil vineyard with mostly Syrah and Petit Syrah. And then there's Molle Ida, a remote two-acre Mauvedre vineyard. It was not only the scarcity that made Cinquanon so collectible. It was the personality. Every release had its own name, its own label, and often its own blend. Manfred designed the himself, so the bottles felt less like standard wine labels and more like limited-edition art objects. There was even a book dedicated to his art. And it's really important to understand that Alain Krenkel is not a footnote in this story. From the beginning, Cinquanon was a Manfred and Alain project. In 2014, Manfred survived a serious motorcycle accident, an accident that changed his life and the Cinquanon dynamic. Alain's role became even more visible, and the wines we're drinking today were made under her winemaking guidance and leadership. What an amazing story and partnership. If there's one thing that stands out about these wines, it's that they are thick and dense and deep colored. Deeply colored, for sure. Especially one and three. Two is a little bit lighter, but only in comparison. So that's one of the things that they've done. We're talking about the California Colt wines and the extraction that's happened, right? That was a big deal. Now, I obviously did research as far as doing this episode, and Manfred Krenkel was talking about the cold soak. So he's cold soaking the grapes for four or five days prior to starting the fermentation, just to get all the color and the flavors without getting the tannins. Is that part of the reason why these are so deeply colored? That's definitely a huge part of it. You start with Graziano, which is the first one here, and then the third is mostly Syrah, and both of those are very deeply colored grapes. I had to do this on camera, but I didn't even know about Graziano. Until I started doing a little bit more research, I was like, Graziano? What is that, and where does it come from? Yeah, it's a super, super minor blending grape in Rioja. It adds color to Tempranillo, because like Granacha or Ganache, those two grapes don't have a ton of color. Well, why don't we start there then? I love it. The second wine is where the Krenkel universe gets a bit unorthodox. The 2018, the third twin, Graziano. Graziano is not a classic Rhone grape. It's best known in Spain, especially in Rioja, where it's usually blended in small amounts for acidity, color, structure, and aromatics. But in typical Krenkel fashion, this is not a minor blending component. It is the star of the wine. This bottling is reportedly 90% Graziano with 5% Petit Syrah, 3% Syrah, and 2% Vionnet, grown at the third twin vineyard near Los Alamos. It was co-fermented with Vionnet, aged 27 months in French oak, about one third of it's new, and production was only about 500 to 600 cases. This will be a first time for me, and I have absolutely no expectations. This has definitely got a unique nose to it. Okay, so I do get a lot of alcohol. Like that hits me right in the face, right? It's like the bourbon tasting. I might have to smell with my mouth open, right? This is like intense. For me, anybody else getting like animal leather, there is like raw leather belt to it, like old dirty shoe. I can't wait to try this. Can we just take a sip? Yeah, let's do it. I am so excited. You don't want to talk about herbs and anything else yet? No, well, you know what? We should, but gosh, I'm so excited. That's different. It's got that burning aftertaste, which I'm not crazy about. I gotta tell you, I am kind of crazy about this. I like this. Did you see that coming? Everyone knows I like the easy drinking vibes. This isn't necessarily easy drinking, is it? Definitely not. I really expected a little more kind of like round fruitiness, and there's a lot more leather and stemmy and earthy and the alcohol. So do you think that's part of also because they're relatively young? These are 2018s. Do you think some of that would mellow down? Like, I mean... Maybe, but alcohol tends to evaporate off. Like you're in the bottle. Where is it going? When you start with that much alcohol and it's so hot, I don't think that's a great sign. And super young for you. These are still eight years old in the bottle. You know, that's not crazy young for most people. Well, I mean, they spent, what, three years in a barrel. So that would have been... I mean, they were, what, four years in the bottle at this point? So they're kind of young, right? I mean, still, harvest was eight years ago. Well, I gotta tell you, I think this is fascinating. And the stemminess doesn't bother you? No, you know what? There is a little bit of it, right? And I thought it was gonna... But I actually think that it's something that's gonna dissipate with a little bit of time. I don't see that as like just... And there's so much more going on here. Getting some more, like, mushroomy tertiary notes and finding some way to mellow a bit of this out could be super fun. So you're not quite on my page. I mean, I know that she's... I think it's super interesting. Don't get me wrong. I'm fascinated by all the things that are going on and the intensity and the complexity about this wine are off the charts, without a doubt. What do I compare this to? I've never had a 90% Graciano. Well, I think we should move on to the next wine. I'm game with that. I'm down to try more Grenache. All right. The third wine brings us to one of the two grapes that built the Cinquanon cult, Grenache. That matters because the winery was such an outlier in the California cult wine world. Most of the famous cult wines in the 1990s and early 2000s were Napa Cabernet. Manfred Krenkel built his reputation with his own varieties, especially Grenache and Syrah. This 2018 Eleven Confessions Grenache is 83.7% Grenache, with 9.1% Syrah, 6% Petit Syrah, and 1.2% B&A. It was partially whole cluster fermented with native yeast, then aged 38 months in French oak. Roughly half of it new. Production was only about 1,000 cases. Alcohol is around 15.9%, and Wine Advocate scored 99 points. The vineyard is central to the story. Eleven Confessions is the winery's estate vineyard in Santa Rita Hills, a cool site, densely planted, harvested very late, and farmed for extremely low yields. It represents the moment Cinquanon evolved from a purchased fruit cult wine into a true estate project. So this bottle is not just Cinquanon Grenache. It is modern Cinquanon. Estate fruit, tiny production, long aging, huge critical acclaim, and one of the original grapes that made the winery famous. I'm not sure that we got the sequence right. Because I think I just finished like a berry pie here. Right. And then we're moving into Grenache. When I looked at the makeup for the Grenache, I was like, oh, chef's enough to pop. This should definitely be like in the second, like all the alcohol, the big combination of flavors. I was like, this should totally be in the second place. But I didn't know what to compare the Graciano to. If you look at the color here, right, it's lighter than the other two. We did a comparison. You brought a bottle. I mean, I kind of knew that. So you brought a bottle of Grenache. I did. And then I think we're going to run that. Just look at the comparison between like a kind of like a normal Grenache and then the synchronic Grenache. Right. Like you want to talk about color extraction. You want to talk about, you know. This is a great example of that. All right. Should we go ahead and give it a sniff? Yes, please. This one's way more red. Yeah. This is all like blue and blackberry and purple fruits. The Grenache is much, much more red. You definitely smell the alcohol though. I know we don't want to talk about you not being well, but it might be that you're not well. And so like the sensitivity for like some of the flavors are going away and all you're smelling is the burn. And so the wines might not be as good as they otherwise would be. I think I'll be okay. All right. I think I get like a little bit of foresty. Sure. A bit of maybe a little bit of cedar or wood or something like that. And strawberry. Orange. And orange. Yes, I like those. I don't think I get as much strawberry here as I would normally get. Like a lot of Grenaches are just like in your face strawberry, right? Right. But I don't feel this is this is overwhelming strawberry. Do you like? It's not overwhelming, but I think it's one of the components. Let's give it a try. Yeah, I really love this wine. And I'm a sucker for Grenache. Like I know that I have a bias for it. I love Grenache, but I really like this one. I mean, I feel like I just can't comment on it because it's like they all kind of just taste the same right now. Like you have a cold. It's hard to it's hard to tell. Yeah. High alcohol wines when you have a cold is not. I don't think it matters. I think it's like, but can you even pick up on the flavor? So that's the thing. Yeah, I'm sorry. The okay. I didn't want to film a video, but my dad made me today. You can't say stuff like that. Oh my gosh, this is so good, isn't it? I really love this one. Like I think the alcohol is still there, but this one has more balance than the previous two. Like it still has things going on. The ripeness of the fruit, the even overripeness of the fruit. Like it kind of matches where it didn't necessarily match for me here. The alcohol led the show and it was kind of distracting instead of being a part of it and lifting it up. I kind of thinking I need to get on the mailing list. It'll only take you six years. Yeah. I suppose if you're on the list, you're not going to get your spot up, are you? Probably not. And we should mention that this is a 100 point wine advocate wine, right? Like it's 100 point wines like scattered throughout. Like they don't have any problems. That is true. 100 points for sure. You know, um, this has been really fun, but we got one more left. Well, let's go to Syrah next. The final wine brings the story full circle because Syrah is where the Cinequanon began. The first wine release, 1994 Queen of Spades, was Syrah from Bien Lecido fruit. Only four and a half barrels were made. And that tiny wine became the starting point for one of California's most famous cult wineries. This 2018 11 Confessions Syrah is the modern estate version of that origin story. The blend is 82% Syrah with 10% Grenache, 5% Petit Syrah and 2% V&A. It was partially whole cluster fermented with native yeast, given long maceration and aged 38 months in French oak. About half of it new. Production was about a thousand cases. Alcohol is around 16% and Wine Advocate gave a perfect 100 points. This wine also explains why Cinequanon became both loved and debated. These wines were never designed to be quiet or conventional. It came out of the Manfred Frankel love of grown varieties, but they became something distinct to California. Syrah is the grape that started the whole story. Okay, so am I the only one here with a buzz? Um, yeah, because I've only been taking small sips. What about you? Uh, I'm a little warm. I mean, this is like high alcohol wines here. These are, these are as close to you as you can get. Maybe that's buzz. These are as close as you can get to fortified wines without literally fortifying them. Like yeast die at 15-16%. So like this is high alcohol. Yeah, they die. Sure. Yeah, I feel like I'm like two sips away from starting to slurp. Let's drink some Syrah then. All right, well, we got to smell it. I'll just start organizing this tasting from now on. Appreciate that. So what are you guys getting on the nose? All the berries, like every color and fruit style of blackberry, raspberry. I get cherry, black cherry. What do you got? I don't know. I mean, I'm like, yeah, it's like, this is just dense. Oh. I feel like I'm putting my nose into a glass of motor oil. You know? Yeah, I think there's a menthol component to it. And I'm expecting a little bit of steminess and just kind of like that harshness. But let's hope it doesn't have that. You know what? This is a happy occasion. I mean. Drinking Cinquantone. We've got a little warm buzz on in the spring out. It's good. All right. Cheers. I like that one. That might be my favorite out of all of them. I thought it was good. It's funny. It took until the end for me to get like the typical Syrah notes. Like I get cocoa and mocha. That came once I started tasting it. But for me to get like, wait this long to start talking about like meat and leather and like some of those traditional Syrah notes. They're there, but it is definitely like buried behind all of that fruit. You know what I don't like about Syrah? It's, it's a, there's a lot of fruit. Methane Syrah is amazing? No. I, I love the upfront fruit and all that kind of stuff. They just tend to be a tad bit bitter. And it's like you get all the good stuff and then there's just bitterness. And you know what this doesn't have? Bitterness. We got it. Yeah. If there's a hint, there's a little bit of it and you know that it's Syrah. But this is really good. I think both of these, we were talking about this, you know, where we're looking at like the Grenache Syrah, the Rome kind of comparison with these. And, and they're sort of missing that like old world herbal and bitter and like the tannin bite and those things. And I think that's part of what makes them very pleasurable. You know what, here's, here's what I thought. And a lot of the, a lot of the research that we did, there was this thought about balance. And I was like, bullshit balance. There's no way there's balance. And I've had a few of these wines before and, and those wines didn't taste balanced to me. And so I was kind of prepared to be like, there's no balance. Um, I still don't think they're like super balanced wines, but they do have the structure in the city and all that to go with the fruit. And they're not, um, they're just very, very enjoyable. Yes. But they're a mouthful. Yes. And they're not just like, I mean, they are intense wines. Um, I wanted to like them less than I do. Okay. I don't know. I don't understand. I'm like, I, but you know, you just kind of. Why didn't you want to like them? Because he doesn't have any room for any more wine. Yeah. I don't get a whole new collection. You've got to make this. Yeah. These are good ones. I really like them. I would say very good wines. I love the Grenache and the Syrah. I don't, I would like to try the Graziano again from a different bottle. I feel like this one has a little bit of kind of weirdness and funkiness that I don't super love, um, that, that sets it apart from the other two and how good they are. There's something a little funky, weird about this. Here's what I would say about these wines. So if you're a viewer and you kind of like burgundy and light of wines and like the finesse wines, you're not gonna like these. These are going to be overwhelming, overpowering. And I think there's just, it's just too much. So Jeff, what was your favorite? All right. Cheers, everyone. Thanks for wading through this with us. Thanks for watching.