Tasting Notes

Release Date: Fall 2004

Followers of California Cabernet vintages have by now heard the good news about the 2001 vintage. Full crop levels, superb moderate weather, no rain at harvest, ideal picking, and so it was on this mountaintop.

I have been growing and making Cabernet wines here since 1981 and the one of the things I've learned about our Cabernet vines is to wait. Come the harvest season we do lots of sampling of our vineyard parcels. There always comes a moment when all the elements tell you "time to pick!" but Cabernet Sauvignon is a different animal. It needs time for the flavors to deepen and the tannins to soften, sometimes many weeks. Because of this waiting game, the weather needs to cooperate. And so it did in 2001.

The 2001 vintage displays captivating aromas of cassis, violet, and crushed blackberry. Lush and broad on the palate with flavors of plum, blackberry, and dark chocolate, it finishes with fine-grained, mouth-coating tannins and crucial sweetness of fruit.

I would enjoy this wine over the next couple of years then lay some away and forget it for ten.

Production

2,188

Tech Notes

Yield: 2 tons per acre Harvest: September 11th- October 13th Numbers @ Harvest: 23.9 Brix , 3.5 pH, 6.5 grams acidity Barrel Regimen: 50% Bordeaux French thin stave; 50% American Appalachian Bottling: August 2003

Reviews

90 points Wine Enthusiast Magazine  - June 2005

This ageable wine is young and tannic now, with an astringent finish.  Cherry and blackberry stuffing is down there for the long haul.  Best after 2010 and beyond. —S.H.

89 (+?) points Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar - January/February 2005

Saturated ruby-red. Cassis, bitter chocolate, tobacco, earth, cinnamon and eucalyptus on the nose, lifted by a note of dried rose. Juicy and tightly wound, with sappy flavors of cassis, tobacco, chocolate and roast coffee. As young as this is, it already shows a roundness of texture and a deep sweetness. Finishes with sweet tannins and lingering notes of mocha and vanilla. Like the estate’s pinot noir, this needs bottle aging.