Spicy, raspberry, cherry, blackberry, almond paste, rosemary, and a touch of blooming meadow. Spicy earthy flavors, floral, vanilla, light body, long and lingering with nice balance.
Cellaring: As with all Red Mountain red wines, it should age well, probably peaking in 15 years, but still a great wine even at 20-30 years old.
Grapes are from Hedges Estate Vineyard. This wine was cold soaked overnight then allowed to spontaneous ferment with indigenous yeast for 6 days on skins while being pumped over twice daily before pressing to barrels, where it completed indigenous malolactic fermentation. It was 100% barrel aged for 22 months in 100% New American oak.
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
100% Hedges Estate Vineyard, high density - head trained block
Sarah Hedges Goedhart
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