While Kathy and I have written a fair bit about Erin and Matt Cline’s Three Wine Company and their bottlings sourced from fruit near our ‘hood, it was nevertheless pretty cool to receive Erin’s oh-so-gracious invitation to join them at the winery for their Paella Party in celebration of their newest CoCo County releases.

The Three facility joins four other boutique producers situated in The Old Sugar Mill, a gorgeously restored, uh, sugar mill, located about 70 miles east and north of our burg of Oakley, in Clarksburg, CA. Serving as a sort of incubator for smaller-production vintners, the Mill offers space for crush, barrel storage, tasting rooms and special event facilities, all under one capacious, stylish roof.

Motoring east toward the Central Valley is always less of a hassle than journeying toward Ess Eff, and, despite still not being able to escape one of NoCal’s ubiquitous toll bridges, we found ourselves tooling along the delta levee highway through thickets of corn, hay and acres upon acres of wine grapevines.

A few miles from the Mill, we passed signage for Bogle Vineyards, about whom we’ve written a while back. Bogle sources lots of fruit from Oakley’s Continente vineyard, but turning off the highway to drive what seemed like 10 miles on a narrow road snaking through nothing but rows of vines, I’m kinda hard-pressed to see how they have to buy anything. And yet, Bogle is a fairly big producer, so, in retrospect, it makes sense to contract out, especially since the tasting room was pouring some nice stuff that you’ll never see at Safeway. Nice prices, too; glad we stopped in.

Then it was on to Three, and the Duck Paella bacchanal! We had a blast: The paella catered by Sonoma’s Hidden Oak B&B was delicious, and Matt’s wines were as tasty as we’d all come to expect from our previous posts. The CoCo connection was reinforced that day, as well; Matt had been in Oakley that morning, and a truck full of Oakley Carignane was just working its way into the de-stemmer. (See Kath’s photo: I think it “augers” well for CoCo Carignane.)

We also ran into Aldo Ghiozzi of the Contra Costa Wine, Grape and Olive Growers Association, who’d invited me to my first meeting a mere couple of weeks ago. Erin Cline then introduced us to Becky Robinson and Shanin Ybarrondao of ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers), a nonprofit org dedicated to engendering knowledge and appreciation of the varietal. ZAP holds a monster Zin-centric gangbang tasting in San Fran every year; Kathy and I last attended in 1998, when we lived in the city, and had a teeth-staining good time (or so I was told the next day).

As it happens, the two wines released at Three’s release clambake hail from CoCo: a Lucchesi Vyd Carignane; and an old vine Field Blend — that beautiful old-skool harvest amalgam of grapes from assorted vines stuck indifferently into the ground by OGs (Original Growahs) more than a century ago.

We ended up joining Three’s wine club; the local connection to the wine releases was purely coincidental. On a personal note, Kath and I have, at various times, belonged to dozens of wine clubs over the years, in Cali, Washington state and Oregon. We suffered a bit of a financial hit a few months ago, and it became obvious that a quick amelioration of some of the pain was to cancel all the “surprise” charges on the credit card. Oh sure, it was always a pleasure to meet UPS guy Wayne once a week — who hates Christmas in June? — but that VISA dude once a month? Not so much. We dropped all of our wine club subscriptions: One in Sonoma we had just joined in February of this year; one in WA of which we’d been members since we’d moved back to Seattle in 1999. Then there was the Napa sparkling wine club with which we lived an on-again/off-again affair: Every time we joined, our work sitch turned to shi-ite; we’d quit, and things improved for us. We always believed that North Americans don’t drink enough bubbly, but toss me a frickin’ bone people!

But, things are indeed looking better these days, and Saturday of last week, we joined the Three Wine Company wine club. Two bottles every quarter, and prices are good. Kathy even signed up for the “will call” option, a great excuse to gas up the “Lisa Marie” and pick up our wine in person at The Old Sugar Mill.

As Kath has been singing the past few days, “Take the last train to Clarksburg … .”

Three Wine Company’s 2008 Old Vines Field Blend Contra Costa County is a funky-fresh one-stop-shop mix of 34% Zin, 21% Carignane, 19% Mataro (aka Mourvèdre) 16% Petite Sirah, 8% Alicante Bouschet and 2% Black Malvoisie (an old-skool California synonym for Cinsault). I’m always amazed that a “field blend” — essentially a wine that’s made from grapes harvested from a vineyard’s multi-varietal vines planted in possibly random fashion — could even be parsed by varietal percentages. Greater minds than mine …

This CoCo blend has a nice garnet look reminiscent of fizzless Mr. Pibb. There’s a brambly rusticity on the nose: dusty baking spices (clove, cinnamon). The earthy cocoa tannins balance nicely with some acidity on a decently lengthy finish.