2024

Jeb Dunnuck 2024 Reviews

2023 Skylark Wine Company Pinot Blanc Orsi Vineyard 91

Crushed citrus, mint, leafy herbs, and some mineral-like nuances all emerge from the 2023 Pinot Blanc Orsi Vineyard, a lively, clean, crisp white that has bright acidity and a great finish. It’s going to be about as versatile on the dinner table as they come and should have a couple years of prime drinking.


2023 Skylark Wine Company Pink Belly Rose 89

The 2023 Pink Belly Rose is all Grenache from Mendocino County, and it offers a Bandol-like light salmon hue to go with bright, crisp notes of savory orange zest, chalky minerality, and spice. It’s balanced, medium-bodied, has a supple mouthfeel, and a good finish. As rosés from California go, it’s a smoking value as well.


2019 Skylark Wine Company Grenache 90

The current release, the 2019 Grenache is 88% Grenache and 12% Syrah that was aged 20 months in used barrels. This ruby-hued effort offers lots of savory red and black fruits, peppery herbs, underbrush, and some meaty nuances in a medium-bodied, rounded, layered, complex package. It’s clearly mature today, yet it should continue drinking nicely through 2029.


2021 Skylark Wine Company Red Belly 91

The latest release for this cuvée, the 2021 Red Belly checks in as 75% Syrah, 15% Grenache, and the final 10% Carignan, all of which is from Mendocino fruit. It’s always a good value, and the 2021 is no exception, offering a solid nose of peppery red and black fruits, herbes de Provence, leather, and assorted baking spice-like nuances. Charming, medium-bodied, beautifully textured, and absolutely delicious, this classy red is drinking great today, yet I see no reason it shouldn’t keep nicely through 2031. It might be the finest example of this cuvée I’ve tasted.


2019 Skylark Wine Company Syrah Rodgers Creek Vineyard 92

Reminding me of a great Crozes-Hermitage, the 2019 Syrah Rodgers Creek Vineyard has terrific red and black berry fruits, bacon fat, peppery herbs, and hints of game in a medium-bodied, layered, balanced style that’s already a joy to drink. It will keep nicely through 2029 with no issues, and I suspect even longer. This is 100% Syrah that spent two years in one-third new French oak.

2023

San Diego Magazine Features Skylark

Q&A With Del Mar Wine + Food Fest’s Skylark Wine Company

Published September 6, 2023

Link to SD Magazine Full Article

Owner and Coronado-born winemaker Robert Perkins spills on his process, hometown memories, and his mother’s guerrilla marketing tactics

Skylark Wine Company was never supposed to exist. John Lancaster and Robert Perkins were doing great as the manager and sommelier, respectively, at Boulevard in San Francisco. The famous farm-to-table pioneer was even awarded the Best Restaurant in America by the James Beard Foundation. Wine was just supposed to be a little passion project, a couple of restaurant guys who loved vino making a barrel or two just for kicks.Now, the duo own are heading into their 19th harvest. Theirs is a boutique operation, making Rhône-style reds, Provence-style rosés, and pinot blanc at a total of around 5,000 cases per year (a winery can produce up to 49,999 cases annually and still be considered “small”).Perkins was born and raised in Coronado, and he’s coming home for the Del Mar Wine + Food Festival to pour his wines and engage with the community that produced him. Festivals like this are the only opportunities to taste Skylark Wines outside of restaurants, so we rang Perkins to ask him a few questions about winemaking, DMWFF, and the extreme circumstances under which he’d consider making a chardonnay.

What is winemaking like, especially if you were to analogize it to somebody who’s never done it.

I’m a painter, and I think about blending trails in that respect, in having that palette of barrels. And how a little of [one wine in the blend] can go a long way. And, say a little of this makes it really nice—well, doubling that doesn’t necessarily assist it. From a color palette to a barrel palette, I think they’re very similar in how you approach it. I also agree it’s probably like [being] a chef, in the sense of how you combine things. What is it that you’re going for? Are you going for a one-note wonder? Or are you going for layers and nuances?

To come from the restaurant floor to winemaking seems so intimidating. How did you navigate all the variables with that first barrel or the first vintage? When did you feel like you got a sense of what you were doing?

We certainly had a number of angels on our shoulders. There were people around we could lean on [to ask] how to negotiate contracts, where to find our barrels, [and] how to set up insurance, compliance, and record-keeping and all that. When it came to oenology, we paid through the nose to lab-test the wines in the beginning years. The pinot blanc and the syrah were both challenging wines.We made a lot of mistakes that first year that we quickly changed in 2006, both in how we handled it and how we communicated. It was John and I together, and in those days, one of us was at the winery, and the other had to be on the floor of the restaurant, so we were rarely side by side. There was a lot of phone communication, and it was a learning curve, without a doubt. I’m still learning.

You’ve said that you make wines that you like to drink, but do you ever find yourself at a point where you think maybe the best thing for particular wine would be to push it away from your personal taste? Does that make sense?

Well, a little. So, we worked with chardonnay. In the beginning, we were steadfast that we were not going to work with chardonnay. And a gentleman, Alex McGregor [of Saracina Vineyards], kind of held our hand. He goes, “Look at this vineyard; look at this fruit; look at this price. This is a no brainer.” So we decided, okay, if we’re going to do a chardonnay, we’re going to do it in a Mâcon style.This was early on, back [in] 2006. So we did it: stainless steel, no malolactic fermentation, four months on lees, and we gained some really nice press behind it. We were really breaking that California mold [of buttery, rich chardonnays]. So, I guess we were following our passion. You see a lot of [unoaked chardonnays] now, but back then, there weren’t many.

Do you make it back to San Diego much?

I do! My family still lives on Coronado. They own the hardware store. I get back at least two or three times a year. When my parents were still alive, it was more often, but still—I’m coming down for the Coronado Beer & Wine Festival two weeks after Del Mar Wine + Food Festival, so I’ll get some good family time.

How has the wine scene changed down here since you started out?

It’s definitely changed. When I first started being a salesman of our own wines, it was very chocolate-and-vanilla. It was like it had to be chardonnay or cabernet for me to even get in the door. Or it was a corporate list.

How does it feel to pour wines back home?

Oh, it’s fantastic. I love it. For the longest time, I wanted my flag in San Diego so bad. Those were the chocolate-and-vanilla days. When I would get an account or two in Coronado, in the beginning, it was thrilling. You know, my mother could go order it.And my mother was so funny. A little side story: [At] every restaurant she went to, she’d ask if they had Skylark, all the while knowing they didn’t have it.

Early guerilla marketing?

It became this thing! It was so embarrassing. And, whether I was there or not, I just knew she was doing that. Then, one day she was at C-Level on the water, and they had our syrah on the list. It was, you know, $75. She asks about it, like she always did, and they go, “Yes, we have it; it’s right here.” She sees the price and says, “Oh no, I won’t pay that.” I go, “Mom, pony up and buy the bottle!”Catch Skylark Wine Company at the Del Mar Wine + Food Festival’s Grand Tasting on September 9 & 10. Get your tickets here.

 

2021

The Chronicle: This sub-$20 red wine from two S.F. sommeliers is easy Memorial Day drinking

As longtime sommeliers at Boulevard restaurant in San Francisco, John Lancaster and Robert Perkins were serving fancy wines every night: grand cru Burgundy, prestigious Chateauneuf du Pape, cult California Cabernets. But when the two decided to make their own wine, they wanted to go in the opposite direction.

“All the expensive wines would drive us crazy,” says Perkins. There was a surplus of excellent wines at the high end of the price spectrum, but a paucity at the lower end, they said. Rather than make yet another expensive bottle, they figured they could help fill a gap that wine buyers like them needed filled, by turning out wines that were easy-drinking, well made and affordable.

That was 17 years ago. Ever since, Lancaster and Perkins have been turning out consistently delicious bottles under their Skylark label. Among their most successful is a Rhone-inspired blend called Red Belly, which sells for $20 or less.

 “The idea for Red Belly was just to make something user-friendly and versatile,” says Lancaster, who is still the wine director at Boulevard. (Perkins left the restaurant a few years ago to focus fulltime on Skylark.)

Specifically, they were aiming for something like a Cotes du Rhone, a red blend from France’s southern Rhone Valley that tends to be juicy, fruity and approachable. Cotes du Rhone wines come from less famous areas of the Rhone Valley than their more-expensive counterpart, Chateauneuf du Pape, but what they lack in prestige they often make up for in homey charm.

Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre are usually components of a Cotes du Rhone wine. When Perkins and Lancaster set out to make Red Belly, they quickly found vineyards where they could buy some Syrah and Grenache grapes, but locating Mourvedre proved more difficult. So they decided to diverge a little bit from the Cotes du Rhone template. 

Instead of Mourvedre, they ended up finding a vineyard source for Carignan, a grape variety that’s common in Spain and southern France. It’s not exactly a Mourvedre lookalike — Carignan lacks the savory, meaty notes that are typical in Mourvedre — but it fits the bill for an assertive, medium-bodied red wine with dark fruit flavors. Carignan is also plentiful in Mendocino County, making their Carignan-Syrah-Grenache blend a distinctly Californian riff on the French recipe.

I recently opened a bottle of Skylark’s 2016 Red Belly and found it to be an ideal red for this time of year, as we approach Memorial Day: hearty enough to stand up to grilled food but light enough to remain refreshing on a hot day. It smells like strawberries and thyme, with zesty, spicy flavors of black pepper and a bitter, dark cherry. Smooth, silky tannins keep it from feeling too heavy. The wine is very quaffable.

It fulfills one of the criteria that Perkins says was most important to the two somms-turned-winemakers. “I always think about when I’m tableside and I have two customers, one having the salmon, one having the steak, and they want the perfect bottle to go with both dishes,” he says. “I love finding those wines that fit the mark, that can be in the middle.”

Red Belly and the other Skylark wines will be back on the wine list at Boulevard once it reopens; the restaurant is currently undergoing a renovation. In the meantime, either the 2016 or 2017 vintage of the wine is available from the Skylark website, plus the following San Francisco retailers: San Francisco Wine Trading Co., Little Vine, K&L and William Cross. You can also find it at Vino in Oakland. Note: The price may vary by a couple of dollars, and some retailers may run out of inventory. I tasted the 2016 Red Belly for this story, but many stores are now carrying the 2017, and it tastes similar.

Skylark Red Belly North Coast 2016 ($20, 14.5%)

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley

2008

Wine Spectator Insider, VOL.4 #43

Syrah Sonoma Valley Rodgers Creek Vineyard 2006
91 points | $36 | 125 cases made | Red

Rich and full-bodied, with intense, focused pepper, spice and wild berry fruit that’s deep and complex, ending with a long, persistent finish and lingering tannins. Drink now through 2013.

James Laube, Senior Editor Wine Spectator

2006

Connesoisseur’s Guide to California Wine, Nov. 2006

SKYLARK Rodgers Creek Vineyard 2004 Sonoma Valley
88 Points

Concentrated blackberry smells with a jammy component are filled out by sweet oak and a touch of minerally soil and start the wine off on a positive note, if a tad overdone direction, and it’s strong personality follows right in step within its fleshy palatal impressions. A hot note emerges at the finish without disqulifying the wine for service with savory meats now and over the next several years.