Compline Wine Club - Local Pickup

What do you get with this monthly club? 

• Two bottles that drink deliciously right now
• Hard-to-find wines: selected by Matt Stamp and Ryan Stetins, founders of Compline
• Access: club perks in the Restaurant and in our new Wine Shop opening in fall 2022
• Flexibility: See the wines before committing, skip a month if you want, and cancel anytime

LOCAL PICKUP AND SHIPPING AVAILABLE: This monthly club is available for local pickup at Compline Restaurant and Wine Shop. For shipping options, please click here.

HOT WEATHER: Ground shipping during periods of hot weather may cause damage to wine. During summer months, we prefer to HOLD wine club shipments until the weather cools down. If you want to receive your wines immediately, please contact us at matt@complinewine.com to discuss alternative shipping options. 

January selections:

This is the time of year when we look for denser, deeply concentrated reds to cure wintertime blues. And we found them both in Spain, in the neighboring regions of Rioja and Navarra.

Rioja - Arizcuren "Monte Gatún" 2019
Today's Rioja is Spain's answer to Bordeaux. Rioja's "modern" traditional wineries were founded in the aftermath of phylloxera's arrival in France, when Bordelaise merchants started importing wines from—and exporting expertise to—the land across the Pyrenees. Like Bordeaux, Rioja wines were blends, incorporating Tempranillo, Garnacha (Grenache), Mazuelo (Carignan), and other local varieties. Today, Tempranillo dominates, but Garnacha was Rioja's most planted variety and most important grape before the OG 19th-century French consultants showed up on the scene. 

Javier Arizcuren, an architect who began tending his family's vineyards in 2011, plays homage to this past. Alongside Tempranillo, he works with a few ancient Garnacha and Mazuelo vines in the Rioja Oriental. Some of them date back to the days before phylloxera—and French winemaking manuals—arrived! "Monte Gatún" is the result: a blend of 75% Tempranillo, 15% Garnacha, and 10% Mazuelo, aged in oak and concrete. It's our favorite new Rioja find of the year!

Navarra - Aseginolaza y Leunda "Cuvée" 2019
Navarra, Rioja's northeastern neighbor, once churned out oceans of Garnacha rosé. In recent decades, Tempranillo plantings surged, replacing Garnacha by the turn of the millenium as red wine production increased. With luck, some of the region's oldest Garnacha vines remained! (Perhaps rosé drinkers unwittingly enabled their survival, as domestic white Zinfandel drinkers aided the continued existence of old vines in our country...)

Environmental biologists Jon Aseginolaza & Pedro Leunda came onto the Navarra wine scene in 2017, committed to finding and recovering the region's oldest Garnacha vineyards. They made this Cuvée from 88% Garnacha, blended with a little Tempranillo, sourced from old dry-farmed Navarra bush vines. It's everything you want great "Grenache" to be—full-bodied, savage, garrigue-y, dark-fruited. About 160 cases made. We love it. 

Wine Notes by Matt Stamp