Iruai Oh-Mah Mondeuse 2018

Iruai's Oh-Mah Mondeuse is 100% Mondeuse Noire sourced from California fruit during Chad Hinds' gypsy winemaking era under the Methode Sauvage label. The 2018 vintage was produced before Hinds and his wife Michelle permanently relocated to Scott Valley in Siskiyou County, a period when he was still drawing on vineyards across the state to explore alpine varieties that rarely appear in California.

Mondeuse Noire is an ancient red grape native to the Savoie region of eastern France, genetically related to Syrah through a shared parent, Mondeuse Blanche. It produces deeply colored, high-acid wines with firm tannins and a flavor profile spanning dark cherry, blackberry, black pepper, and leather. At 12.5% ABV, this version stays lean and food-driven, retaining the grape's characteristic tension between ripe blue fruit and savory, mineral edges.

The wine is made with minimal intervention: no additives, no fining, no filtration, low added sulfites. Hinds' approach in the cellar is to shepherd each ferment through its own natural development without stripping character. The result is a wine that reads as dark and spicy but finishes fresh, closer to a cool-climate red than a warm California Zinfandel despite sharing some of the same Sierra Foothills geography.

Calaveras County sits within the Sierra Foothills AVA, east of San Francisco in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Vineyards in this area benefit from warm days, significant diurnal temperature swings, and well-draining soils of decomposed granite and volcanic rock that push vines toward concentrated, structured fruit.