2021 Estate Reserve

Tasting Notes

A beautiful vintage for our Estate Reserve program. The new vintage is inky dark ruby with so much going on. Aromatically revealing blue fruit, toasty oak, tar, pencil shavings and blackberry. Lush, rich, building to a monster of a wine without any rough edges and a mouthwatering finish that goes forever. This wine is tight right after opening but slowly starts to reveal itself. Tasted over multiple days and the wine held in perfect condition. I would recommend cellaring until at least 2026 and then should drink through 2040. 

     
- Josh McDaniels, CEO & Director of Winemaking

Vintage Notes

This new, 2021 vintage, is one to be remembered for sure! Generally the vintage was very warm and dry with bud break beginning in April, substantially earlier than what is “normal”. The season continued hot as we grew canopies and got through bloom. During June, right after our Doubleback release weekend, we experienced a long slough of days well over 100 degrees. I remember the winery weather station hitting 118 degrees. We had to closely monitor the vines and irrigate vigorously to maintain canopies and cluster health. The overhead “sprinklers” that we have at our estate, McQueen, really paid off as we ran these and the evaporative cooling affect greatly helped the vines. Harvest came fast as we began picking Merlot on September fourth from McQueen, and ended on October 12th with Petit Verdot also from McQueen. Quality across the board was absolutely outstanding. The kicker for the vintage was that we were only able to yield roughly half of our normal production amounts due to the high stress of the vintage. Purchase and enjoy these wines while they exist, it won’t be long!

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Technical Notes