Assigning any winery a ‘Golden Age,’ however strongly consensus might agree on the matter, remains a complex and multiform naming.
In the New World particularly, ‘Golden Age’ often references little more than the period of a winery’s history whose wines are currently drinking at peak. For example, if a winery founded 40 years ago produces wines that take 30+ years to reach expressive fullness, experiential bias will naturally incline toward the sense that this winery’s greatest achievements are distantly past. 'Nothing from in the past 20 years is nearly this good!' This romanticized past is easily enough gilded as a 'Golden Age.'
In more useful cases ‘Golden Age’ references a period of uniquely high achievement. The late-‘70s through mid-‘90s at Diamond Creek are one example. The wines produced here across these decades display an expressive originality equalled by few American wineries and, perhaps, surpassed by none. With astonishing regularity we’re given wines of flesh, sinew, grip, tenacity, and capital-S Soul.
‘Gravelly Meadow,’ a vertical of which centers this offer, is the firmest and most streamlined of Diamond Creek’s single-sites. I find the wine strikingly Pauillac-like in maturity, with black fruit flavors colored by graphite and leather shadings. There’s a deeper well of fruit than Pauillac though, Diamond Creek’s ‘average’ weight more a once-a-decade phenomenon on Bordeaux’s Left Bank.
Cheers,
Jason
