2017 LA HAUTE CUVÉE
Classic wines require three very important ingredients: A great vintage, a Biodynamic vineyard and an expert natural winemaker. If you’re reading this, you are either about to drink this wine, or looking for context before you purchase it. The wine smells of cherry and new leather, with scents of menthol and fennel spice. The palate is young, tense, and definitive. Tannins are abundant, but silky. The finish is pronounced, secure, prophetic and meaty, yet, not over extracted. Good things come to those who will wait. Recommend 12 hours of decanting when drunk young.
CELLARING: This wine, like other Red Mountain wines, shows best on release with food, but will age well, 15+ years.
Grapes are 95% from Hedges Estate vineyard and 5% Magdalena vineyard. Cabernet Sauvignon was harvested between 10/6 and 10/12 and the Petit Verdot was harvested on 10/5. Juice underwent native fermentation in tank and then pressed to barrels. After finishing primary fermentation the wine went through native malolactic fermentation and then was aged for 21 months in 32% new oak (67% American, 33% French) before bottling. The wine is unfined and unfiltered.
2017 started off cold! January stayed in the upper teens for most of the month and dipped into the negatives for a day or two. Along with the cold we had a lot of snow! People were calling it the 60-year freeze, we hadn’t seen a winter like this since 1955. Spring was damp and the hills a beautiful green. Things started to heat up around July and by August we were surrounded by fires originating in Canada, and up and down the West Coast. There was a blanket of smoke in the sky, which really dampened the sun’s UV rays. This actually helped the vines slow down ripening due to less photosynthesis. Luckily the fires were far enough away that smoke taint was never an issue. We had a mild September and October which really stretched out the maturation period allowing flavors to develop nicely, without Brix getting too high. 2017 was an interesting year and an exciting one!
