Palate
A 100% varietal wine aged in entirely new French oak, this is a big-bodied, grippy wine. It's slightly syrupy with ripe red fruit and a complexity of dried herbs and cedar, which makes it a fine representative of the relatively cooler appellation from which it comes.
Growing Conditions
A warm, dry spring brought early bud break, helped with canopy vigor and berry size and created ideal conditions for flowering and fruit set under sunny skies. With the exception of one heat spike in late June/early July, temperatures were consistently in the zone for optimal vine activity, resulting in notably healthy vines as fruit went through veraison and started ripening. The August 1 start of harvest was the earliest in recent history. White wine grapes came in at a furious pace throughout that month, moving on to lighter reds by early September. Two brief mid-September rains had virtually no impact on the grapes.
