Blended Wine - A Creative wine JOURNEY
 

artiste

Artiste Winery & Tasting Studio, founded in 2002, depicts a 1870s working art studio in the height of the impressionist movement and, of course, is surrounded by bottles of wine with art labels.

All Artiste wines are artistically blended wines, which illustrate the wealth of winemaking experience and knowledge of founder Bion Rice, a member of the Rice family of Sunstone Vineyards.  All the wines feature labels of paintings from impressionist artists.  A visit to Artiste Winery & Tasting Studio is a unique and amazing tasting and visual experience.

Artiste Winery now has two locations in California – one in Santa Ynez and the most recent in Healdsburg.

"The Winemaker Notes: Style vs Terroir", Bion Rice, from Impressions, Spring 2006

"In my humble opinion, the traditional art of winemaking, where a winemaker can exclusively rely on the use of one's olfactory senses, taste buds and gut instinct has effectively been replaced by the industrial sciences of formula enology.  It has become a battle of Style vs. Terroir.

The current wine industry has become reverently devoted to "terroir", or site-specific wines, that can be classified, tested and compared to each other -- because they are so similar to each other.  Terroirists favoring "minimal interventionism" have inadvertently helped promote this technology of taste that is deskilling winemakers and their personal influence over their wines.

Blends are so misunderstood and unclassifiable that they are safely swept under the table by the wine media as "Table Wine".  At Artiste, we believe wines should be judged not by their political boundaries, vintage or varietal composition, but by their ability to match with food, by the memories they evoke, or simple by their level of enjoyment.  We want to bring back the uniqueness of wine a a consumable art form."

 

Investigate the Artiste wines by following the directions below or go to the blended wine query window immediately

The screen shot to the right shows the Query Screen.  Click on it.  Then select Artiste from the winery drop-down box represented in the blue area.  Then click on Find A Specific Winery.  Click on the Wines Icon to discover the unique blends developed by Artiste.  Go directly to Artiste's web site by clicking on the Globe Icon, to learn more about Bion and his winemaking philosophy.