2019 LA HAUTE CUVÉE
Wild black berry fruits, dried herbs, savory herbs, quince zest, cinnamon, dried ginger, cocoa, and a touch of coffee and black licorice. Full palate, bright and nice long finish. Notes of aged leather, umami, dried rosemary, and vanilla round out the structured finish.
Cellaring: Open it now, open it in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. It’ll wow you each time in a different way. It will age very well, as all Red Mountain wines tend to do.
Grapes are from the Biodynamically farmed Hedges Vineyard and Magdalena Vineyard, which is in the Red Mountain AVA. The wine was destemmed and partially crushed into stainless steel fermenters, where it was allowed to begin fermenting with native yeast. It was pumped over twice daily until desired tannin extraction was achieved. It was then pressed to barrels where it underwent “native” malo-lactic fermentation, then racked off lees and 100% barrel aged for 27 months in 78% new oak, 76% French oak, 24% American oak.
Harvest: 2019 threw us for a few surprises when it came to the weather! After 2+ months of snow starting in Mid-Febru- ary it never quite got hot. We were a bit behind going into veraison and the ripening period of September, which was a cold month. We traded our usual Indian summer and warm fall with a chilly September and a freeze on October 10th and 11th that hit a lot of areas pretty hard. Luckily with our early pick philosophy and intuition of picking based on flavors instead of numbers put us ahead of the curve and we had everything in before the freeze. Overall, 2019 is proving to be a classic Washington state vintage, with wines that are showing a lot of balance and restraint that will only become more complex and improve with time
