Hungry Hawk Vineyards & Winery, 2026

​It has been just two years since I first visited Hungry Hawk Vineyards & Winery, and I am very happy to report that all is well.  In fact, so well that they have been named 2026 Winery of the Year by Winemaker Challenge!  Glad I gave them a good review….
Facility is a bit nicer, mostly because they now have better shade.  Also, they have food trucks visiting.

​We sat outside in the shade for our tasting, with music.  On the music side, if you have a chance to hear the guitarist shown below, take it – he’s really good!

Now on to the important thing, the wine.  Last time the Tempranillo was the star.  Since then we have tasted Spanish Tempranillos, though mostly blended with a bit of Garnacha.  I have to say that the Hungry Hawk Tempranillo holds up well to these.

​Backtracking a bit, they offer a variety of tasting flites for $35.  Of these, I chose the red flite, and my wife chose the Mike Embly Collection of their higher-priced wines, including a Sauvignon Blanc for $54.  Now my wife does not like Sauvignon Blanc, so it was a great surprise to me that she found it absolutely superb!  Well, I guess I should not have been surprised.  It did win a few awards….

​We tasted the Carménère again, and it was better than before.  The first time I tasted Carménère was in one of my WSET Level 2 classes, and it had a unique jalapeño aroma and taste.  This latest version had the same aroma, though not so much in the taste.  Very nice wine.
Now, Carménère for a long time was considered extinct.  It was grown extensively in Bordeaux, but all of the Carménère vines were destroyed by phylloxera in the late 19th century.  Come to find out, the grape was being grown extensively in Chile, where it was thought to be a Merlot clone, largely because of similarity in the leaves of the two vines.  I mention this bit of history because, as you might expect, Carménère was used in many of the Bordeaux blends that were among the best wines of the time before the phylloxera invasion in the 1860’s.  Well, if they used it then, why not now that it has been rediscovered?  Sure enough, Hungry Hawk went down that path, producing a wonderful Bordeaux-style blend that might have been similar to the one of the wines that were introduced at the International Exposition of 1855 in Paris, France.  You know, the one that introduced the world to the Grand Cru wineries, such as Chateau Margaux….