As a child, winemaker Charlie Wagner attended the Liberty School in Rutherford, Calif. Years later, in 1950, he built a new home and winery using wood from the original Liberty School structure.
Wanting to commemorate the old schoolhouse, Wagner named his wine Liberty School and concentrated on making cabernet sauvignon wines of the highest quality. For the picture on the label, he chose the image of his old school house.
The first vintage of Liberty School was produced in 1975, and the winery has continued to produce outstanding wines ever since.
The vineyard continued in the hands of the Wagner family until 1996, when it was purchased by Hope Family Vineyards. Hope continued Wagner's tradition of making cabernet sauvignons and added chardonnay and a Meritage-style wine called Cuvee (Kuvay).
The Hope family stayed true to the style that was originally created by Wagner, rather than to adopt the policy of many of the wineries that purchase other wineries and bend them toward their particular style.
We recently had an opportunity to sample the Liberty School's latest releases, and they were excellent.
Liberty School 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon ($16) The grapes for this wine were chosen from selected Paso Robles Vineyards and reflect the region's full fruit flavor famously.
This wine is not only a beautiful California cabernet sauvignon, but also a contradiction of itself.
While it does glorify the typical cabernet sauvignon flavor of cranberries and big, dark blackberries, it does so by presenting these flavors in huge amounts.
This wine can best be called “jammy” because of its almost obscene display of flavors. There is enough tannin in this wine to assure its continued improvement during the next decade.
The Liberty School 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon can accompany any of traditional meat dishes that are normally reserved for the variety, but it also will fit with beef dishes prepared with sweet sauces and, contrary to its aloof ancestral heritage, backyard barbecues.
Liberty School 2011 Chardonnay ($14)These grapes came from the Central Coast wine grape-growing district of California and were specially tended for this specific wine.
The wine is mostly chardonnay, with 5 percent viognier and 5 percent marsanne blended in to soften the wine.
Again, some age-old techniques were used to produce this wine, and the finished results do show it.
Intensity of flavor and aroma are the hallmarks of the Liberty School 2011 Chardonnay. Pear, peach, butterscotch and honeysuckle dominate the flavor and aroma and carry over to the long and creamy finish. There is something unusual about this wine - the intense aftertaste that enhances and helps to further define all of the wine's elements.
Please do not write this off as just another chardonnay, because it most definitely is not.
Liberty School 2009 Cuvee ($16)This wine could be best called a mishmash of grapes because of the use of popular grape varieties in the final blending.
The Liberty School 2009 Cuvee is composed of 85 percent syrah, backed by 7 percent cabernet sauvignon, 3 percent petite sirah, 3 percent grenache and 2 percent viognier.
While the blended grape varieties are in small quantities, they make a definite difference to the wine and their individual properties do show up. While the syrah grape is not known for a peppery flavor, the petite sirah is and it shows up in the first taste. The viognier, while a white grape, adds a flowery element to the aroma and a softness to the finish.
On the whole, the wine displays the aromas of blueberries and cherries with a hint of eucalyptus. The flavor is dominated by cranberry and plum with the aforementioned pepper. The finish is a kaleidoscope of all of the flavors previously mentioned, with the addition of a mineral element providing yet another layer of flavor.
This wine could be considered the king of the backyard barbecue, replacing the often-used zinfandel.
Nixa resident Bennet Bodenstein is a wine columnist and helps manage ArticlesOnWine.com with his wife, Sheila. He can be reached at frojhe@suddenlink.net.
