The 2009 Vintage

The vintage started off very strong with great set and potentially larger clusters. We thinned heavily based on our early cluster counts and weights. As the season progressed we were happy we thinned aggressively as it appeared we were going to have very large berries and possibly lighter wines due to the large berries. Thanks to a warm spell late in the season the vines thrived to full maturity resulting in some dehydration which in turn gave us greater skin to juice ratio in the fermenters. The 2009 wines are dark fruited and quite dense with great mouth coating tannins. Our tasting notes are full of plum, cassis, dense rose petal and chocolate. This is a vintage of very darkly colored, layered and complex wines.