Nose
This elegant wine opens with aromas of dark-purple violets, followed by fresh red plums and dark-roast coffee.
Palate
A subtle note of sweetness mixes with savory dried herbs, scorched earth, graphite, and Seavey’s signature minerality. Soft, generous, and coating in the mouth, this wine has a presence that lifts and expands to an unexpectedly long finish. Winemaker Jim Duane’s advice: “Be patient when you taste this wine and pay attention to the finish.” This wine will get better and better over the next three decades, but it will also be very enjoyable in its earlier years.
Growing Conditions
The 2014 growing season was marked by a very dry winter, but then heavy rain in late February and early March replenished our vines with a full moisture profile. Nonetheless, the berries’ concentrated flavors reveal the ongoing multi-year drought. Early bud break was followed by an early harvest, memorable for the powerful earthquake that shook Napa Valley in late August.
Bottling
June 2016
Winemaking
Seavey separately harvests, vinifies and ages each vineyard block of our grapes. Our winemaking follows classic Bordeaux methods with whole-berry fermentation. In the cool of the early morning harvest, grapes from our 2014 harvest were promptly de-stemmed and the uncrushed berries were gently transferred into fermentation tanks. In order to carefully manage the tannins and resulting wine texture, the grapes were neither crushed nor run through a pump.
Aging
20 months 100% French Oak (60% new)
