Nose

Classic aromas of ripe plum, blackberry, and blueberry.

Palate

Intriguing expressions of vanilla spice, chocolate, and fresh tobacco leaf. The textured pallet has great structure and presence but finishes remarkably smooth and rich.

Growing Conditions

Our primary goal is to make our wine representative of the character of the Stags Leap District Appellation. The 2014 vintage represents yet another of the warm and dry vintages we have had in California and the Stag’s Leap district. This has provided excellent viticultural conditions for us to grow wines of great intensity and concentration.

Harvest

Our grapes are hand harvested in the vineyard at dawn. As they are spread out on the sorting table they are still cold from the nighttime temperatures and only the finest clusters are de-stemmed and make their way to the fermentation tank.

Bottling

Bottled in May 2016.

Winemaking

The grapes will rest for several days in the vats to benefit from a “cold soak”, extracting beautiful fruit character from its own pure juice and skins.
As fermentation begins, the grapes will slowly pick up heat and the skins will begin to rise to the top of the fermentation vessel. In the early stages, we will gently pump the juice back over the skins to give the fermentation plenty of air and allow for excellent contact between the juice and skins. During peak fermentation activity, we may do the process several times each day and employ such practices as delestage, where we remove all of the juice from the tank to allow for complete extraction before returning the free run juice to the grape skins.

Following fermentation we will gently drain the free run juice from the tank and move the wine to French oak barrels. Here, the wine will undergo malolactic fermentation at cave temperatures as they age.

Aging

The wine is generally racked or removed from the barrels every 3 months to allow the wine to temporarily breathe in tank before it is returned to barrel. After about 22 months in barrel the wine is ready to be bottled where it will then age for an additional year and a half before being offered.
2014: 22 months in French oak; 70% new.