Dark red garnet color. Blackberry, cassis, anise, cinnamon and cloves. Tame, yet exotic spices. Hints of cumin, coriander, and a touch of wild sage. A bit of figs, vanilla bean and dusty earth. Black fruit flavors have an impact on the entry, and a hint of sweet spice, earth and vanilla linger on the long finish. There is a lot going on in this wine, the perfect amount of “rough around the edges” youngness but showing great potential for an older refined wine. A manly wine in disguise, this is the well-dressed quiet lady at the poker table who will pull out the royal flush and leave you, well, flush.
Fruit was sourced Hedges (35%), Bel’ Villa (36%), Jolet (20%) and Magdalena (9%) Fruit was harvested between 9/7 and 10/31. This wine was cold soaked overnight then inoculated with yeast, fermented for 7-10 days on skins while being pumped over twice daily before pressing to barrels, where it underwent malo-lactic fermenation. It was 100% barrel aged for 18 months in 13% new oak, 30% French and 70% American.
Harvest Notes:
Harvest: 2016 had a very mild and warm winter followed by a wet Spring with a few heat spikes early on in May. Summer had an average amount of heat, but nothing like what we saw in 2015. A few rain events throughout the growing season made regulating irrigation water a bit tricky. The first part of harvest had mild heat which made for steady and even ripening of the fruit. The end of harvest was hit with off and on rain for a few weeks, which really slowed things down and stretched out picking dates. The 2016 harvest resulted in large crops with impressive fruit quality.
94 Points
Silver
Sarah Hedges Goedhart
Experience Hedges wine all year round
