Description

Coast Road Reserve pours a dark, golden amber, It smells like rich brandy, with hints of apricot and dark florals. When you taste it, you are greeted with luscious deep fruits and a sweet oakiness. It finished quite smoothly.Distilled by hand on our antique cognac still, blended from an appealling mix of richly fruited brandies and deeper, oakier, andmore mature distillates. Some of the brandies date back to our earliest distillations. Plenty of pinot noir brandy in the blend; tons of flavor and a finish that lasts for about 50 miles. Superior to major-house XO cognacs. Dark and brooding” – Joe Corley.Distilled by hand on our antique cognac still, blended from an appealling mix of richly fruited brandies and deeper, oakier, andmore mature distillates. Some of the brandies date back to our earliest distillations. Plenty of pinot noir brandy in the blend; tons of flavor and a finish that lasts for about 50 miles. Superior to major-house XO cognacs.
The distillery was founded in 1982 by Ansley J. Coale, a local rancher, and Hubert Germain-Robin, a native of Cognac, France. Coale, a former Berkeley professor of ancient history,had bought 2,000 acres (809 ha) of farmland outside of Ukiah, named Eagle Ridge Ranch, in 1973. By chance, one day in 1981 he picked up Germain-Robin, who was hitchhiking throughout California in search of a location to make brandy.Germain-Robin came from a family that had been making cognac under the name Jules Robin & Company, but had recently sold the business to Martell, prompting Germain-Robin to leave. Ronald Reagan was an aficionado of Germain-Robin brandies and reserved a number of barrels for the White House, which he served as a matter of national pride to visiting dignitaries such as Mikhail Gorbachev and François Mitterrand. The brandy was also served at Bill Clinton s inaugural ball

One innovation is that in Cognac, brandy is made mostly of the ugni blanc grape (known in Italy as trebbiano), which in the region makes a juice unsuitable for drinking as a wine. By contrast Germain-Robin used, and continues to use, high-quality wine grapes.Initially it used locally produced Pinot Noir, and it continues to use exclusively Mendocino County grapes, generally Colombard and Semillon, as well as some Zinfandel and Viognier. Another innovation is that rather than blending the wine, Germain-Robin produces single-varietal and single-vineyard brandies.