This guest post comes to us from Mira Advani Honeycutt, author of California’s Central Coast, The Ultimate Winery Guide: From Santa Barbara to Paso Robles. She frequently contributes wine and travel pieces to the Good Food Blog.
It’s not often that I find myself tasting wine and listening to acoustic guitar music – both creations of the same person.
But that’s the experience we had at Domaine Degher/Mojo Cellars, enjoying Dennis Degher’s luscious red wines at the tasting bar in his kitchen. Degher’s vineyards and the miniscule winery (annual production a mere 400 cases) are located in San Miguel on the west side of the 101 Freeway, a few miles north of Paso Robles. San Miguel, home to a dozen wineries, falls under the Paso Robles appellation.
“This was a naked hilltop when I moved here in 2003,” says Degher, pointing to his 12-acre hillside ranch that offers a view of the San Miguel Mission in the distance. Degher is also a passionate musician and previously owned Red Zone, a music production company in Santa Monica. He’s worked on recordings of such stellar names as Santana, No Doubt and Kenny Loggins.
![Image Not Available Denis Degher's method of decanting wine.](https://www.kcrw.com/images/image_replaced.png/@@images/592d0a5c-4fab-4c8d-a625-a08ef510e7ba.png)
But his love for wine led him to the Paso Robles wine region. “With this new technology, I knew the music business was coming to an end,” admits Degher. However, his lifetime love for music continues. Next to the barrel room is a professional recording studio, where he composes and records his own musical creations under the name of Sleepy Guitar Johnson.
Back to our wine tasting. Degher practices organic farming on the 3 1/2 acres planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre. The bottling is done under two labels — Old School and Mojo, both featuring the red guitar logo.
After tasting a line-up of six wines, it was evident that Degher works his mojo with bold harmonies and lush tannins that sing. The purist winemaker begins the tasting by ‘seasoning’ our glass with a wine rinse. “These glasses pick up smells in the cabinet,” says Degher. After uncorking, he turns the bottle upside down into a decanter and empties the contents to aerate the wine.
![Image Not Available Domaine Degher Cabernet wines from the hillsides of San Miguel.](https://www.kcrw.com/images/image_replaced.png/@@images/592d0a5c-4fab-4c8d-a625-a08ef510e7ba.png)
We start with the 2009 Old School, a silky blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. This was the first vintage produced from estate fruit. It nabbed a gold award from the San Francisco Chronicle. Degher’s first few vintages starting in 2004 were produced from sourced fruit from local Paso vineyards. The 2010 Old School with a larger percentage of Syrah in the blend had a round mouth feel and a soft finish.
We continued with a reverse vertical tasting of three vintages of Mojo — a Cabernet/Syrah blend from the years 2008/’07/’06. While the ’08 and ’06 were 50/50 Cabernet/Syrah, the ’07 had a third each of Cabernet, Syrah and Grenache. All three were balanced and well structured. The ‘06 with a few years of age showed well-rounded, supple tannins.
The voluptuous 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon with lush tannins is amongst my favorite Degher wines and incidentally this was the wine that first got me introduced to this label a few months back.
Degher walks us around the bocce court alongside a small row of Grenache vines that are not quite ready for harvest. He expresses the symbiosis of music and winemaking this way: “There are a lot of similarities. It’s taking something that is constantly changing and making it classic and enjoyable.”