Winery Notes: It's a tricky business trying to fashion a blended red wine when the components in the blend come from widely disparate growing conditions, soils, exposures, etc. The trick is to find a point of focus so that the seams stitching the Grenache to the Syrah to the Mourvedre, and back again all disappear, AND that the terroir differences, likewise, dissolve to create a unified whole. I'm an impatient guy when it comes to being analytic about tasting wine; I tend to go with the energy. If something grabs me in a strong way, I can hone in on it; if not, I wait for that magic to happen. We've had some exciting vintages of Rocks and Gravel over the years; the 2000 and 2001 were both pretty good to have around if you were out of Gigondas. The 2005 may be the best one yet. If the 2000 was Otis Redding, and the '01 was B.B. King, the '05 might just be Mose Allison... 91 Stephen Tanzer.