A continuation of the wine tasting of Limerick Lane Cellars at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  I also made a brief mention of how the winery has a tie-in with Detroit.

Karen Francis DeGolia is the owner of Limerick Lane Cellars, and back in the early nineties, was involved when the newly created Limerick Lane Cellars was coming back to life and the first harvest.  At the time she was engaged to the founder, farmer and winemaker Tom Collins; sadly, he passed away and she went to pursue other business ventures.  With an economics degree from Dartmouth, and an MBA from Harvard, she moved to Detroit and became one of the youngest female leaders in the automotive industry.  She appreciated marketing and eventually became the General Manager of the Oldsmobile division of General Motors, and then later became a Vice-President at the Ford Motor Company; two of the largest corporations in the Detroit area.  After many years, she found herself back at Limerick Lane in 2002, living at the winery, working the harvests, poured in the tasting rooms and working her marketing magic with wine distributors.  In 2004, she became a CEO of an advertising agency in San Francisco, but the lure of the wine was still captivating, and she bought the adjacent Ricci Vineyard to Limerick Lane Cellars.  By this time, spending time with the vineyard, a grower for the Healdsburg wine industry, and as a Board Member for Copia, her ties were getting stronger.  In 2021, she and her husband bought a twelve-acre parcel of Zinfandel and Petite Sirah.  She then had a meeting with Jake Bilbro, her neighbor that was looking for the right person to purchase the existing estate, so, almost thirty years later, she returned “home.”

We proceeded to have the first red of the tasting, and it was Limerick Lane Cellars “Rocks & Fog” Russian River Valley 2023; their classic interpretation of a Red Rhone style wine that evokes the terroir of the region’s ancient stones and the signature morning fog that drapes over the land.   This wine is a blend of forty percent Syrah, thirty-one percent Grenache, twenty-eight percent Mourvèdre and one percent Petite Sirah.  The wine was fermented and aged in neutral French Oak barrels for a year, and eleven barrels were produced.  The fruit was from the Front Porch Farm, Sceales Vineyard, Acorn Vineyard, Emmit-Scorsone Vineyard and Limerick Lane.  This reddish-purple wine offered notes of raspberry, blackberry, cherry and plum followed by some tobacco leaf, leather and Sous-bois.  On the palate this full-bodied, well-balanced wine displayed tones of red and black fruit, and pepper blending with fresh acidity and medium tannins ending with a medium-to- long-count finish of fruit, spice and terroir.           

We then experienced their first Zinfandel wine, the Limerick Lane Cellars Zinfandel Russian River Valley 2021.  This wine is pure Zinfandel and is a blend of estate-grown fruit and a handful of “old-vine” sites in the Russian River Valley.  The fruit was harvested from Limerick Lane, Maffei Vineyards, Banfield Vineyards, Grist Vineyard, Bacigalupi Vineyards, Monte Rosso Vineyard and Carlisle Vineyard; fifty-nine barrels were produced.  The wine was fermented, aged, in neutral French Oak barrels and bottled after eleven months.  A deep red colored wine that offered notes of black and red fruits, violets, baking spices, licorice and Sous-bois.  On the palate this medium-bodied, well-balanced wine displayed tones of cherry, raspberry, cranberry and pomegranate followed by cloves blending with bold acidity and dusty tannins, ending with a medium-to-long count finish of fruit, spices and terroir.