Composed of 80% Cabernet Franc, 15% Merlot, and the rest Malbec, the 2020 Le Desir was tasted as a barrel sample and offers up a resinous and piney profile that’s lush with aromas of wild cherry liqueur, cedar, wildflowers, white pepper, and forest herbs. It’s full-bodied and long on the palate, with a bit more nervous energy, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this wine evolves over the coming years. I personally like its rustic tannin structure, and it’s impeccably balanced, with a luxurious, ripe feel. Drink it over the next couple of decades.

This is racy and refined with very defined tannins that give length, depth and focus to the wine. Medium to full body. Great energy here. Tight and bright with tannins that have tension and class and are melted into the wine. Bright. Very serious for the vintage. Drink after 2026.

The 2013 Chardonnay Upper Barn is a stunning, mature Chardonnay from Alexander Valley with plenty of life ahead. Matured for 11 months in 49% new oak, it takes plenty of time in the glass to reveal dried apples, mixed nuts, mushroom paste, iodine and pastry scents. The medium-bodied palate is satiny, mouthwatering and loaded with honeyed flavors, and its savory notes of maturity haunt the long finish. 963 cases were made.

The 2019 Chardonnay Broken Road Vineyard was matured for 10 months in 50% new oak. It has delicate scents of apricot, chaparral, panna cotta and matchstick, then the palate explodes with concentrated fruit! It combines a silky texture and shimmery acidity with nuanced, expansive fruit and finishes with tremendous length and spice. It's a complex, polished Chardonnay that has lots of personality and is drinkable straightaway, yet it offers the structure and density to go the distance in the cellar. 392 cases were made.

Wild fermented. Open tops. Extracted dutifully across a 21 day window. Foudre and eggs for 11 months thereafter. This is a wine of power reigned in by sumptuous tannins, like matrix dots doused with spice and teeming across the mind's eye. More southern Rhône than Gredos, often the inspiration in these parts. Moroccan souk. Goa trail blazing. Darker, danker fruits, clove and assertive tannins ... those gorgeous tannins, trailing the wine to prodigious length. Wow!

Picked on a fruit day of the biodynamic calendar, with a portion destemmed and crushed to ceramic eggs where it remained on skins for 121 days, gleaning textural nourishment, complexity and persuasion. The rest, in an egg sans skins. All wild fermented. Among the greatest wines of this country, irrespective of colour. Rooibos, lanolin, quince, pithy stone fruits and almond croissant. A powerful, prodigiously textural wine of depth, resonance and profound belief.

The 2020 Le Désir is a composition of 80% CabernetFranc, 15% Merlot and 5% Malbec, matured for 15months new French oak. Its aromas gain intensity withair, blossoming from bright blackberry, blueberry andviolet to tones of dried thyme, pencil shavings and wildfennel. The palate is harmonious, with an etherealstructure of refreshing acidity and powdery tannins. Itoffers concentrated yet nuanced fruit streaked withgraphite and fl oral tones, and it has a long, fragrantfi nish. I love how much personality this Le Désir has tooffer, despite the challenges of the vintage. 1,200cases were made.

Vivid gold-hued, the 2021 Chardonnay Hapgood has a brilliant nose of caramelized lemons, honeyed green almond, and chalky minerality. This richly textured, full-bodied Chardonnay offers integrated acidity, beautiful overall balance, and a powerful yet still seamless, elegant profile that's a joy to drink.

The 2021 Pinot Noir Hapgood is closer in style to the 3D with its savory, spicy, almost meaty, gamey profile. Redcurrants, mulled raspberries, baking spices, hazelnuts, and dried herbs/forest floor, as well as some classic Sta. Rita Hills marine notes, define the aromatics, and it's medium to fullbodied, with a pure, layered, expansive texture, bright yet integrated acidity, and a gorgeous finish. Drink this complex, insanely good Pinot Noir any time over the coming 10-12 years.

Bay leaf and hints of damp cannabis add a fascinating terpene kick to the underripe black raspberry aromas that lead the nose on this bottling. A vibrant, refreshing acidity powers the plush, thirst-quenching palate, where cherry and strawberry flavors are cut by peppery herbs. It’s both hedonistic and intellectual.

This is often one of the top vineyard
selections, and one that Greg Brewer has worked with for decades. Utterly fresh aromas of cherry,raspberry, tarragon, lemon verbena and cracked pepper erupt on the nose. The palate is also explosive, vibrating with swirling waves of red fruit and
menthol. It’s an addictive taste, perhaps acquired,but resoundingly delicious.

From this high elevation vineyard at 2400 feet above sea level, the 2014 Cabernet
Sauvignon Christopher's Vineyard pours a deep inky red. A robust and ripe profile with
layers of fresh leather, graphite minerals, forest floor, and cassis emerge from the glass. This full-bodied and plush red is velvety in texture, with ripe tannins, savory herbs, black cherry, and a good spine of acidity to keep the wine propelling forward for ages. This library release is going to be something to get excited out and snap up next year when it’s re-released. 400 cases will be released on the market in 2024.

A ripe golden hue, the 2021 Chardonnay Far Coast Vineyard offers more broadness right
away with its perfume of jasmine, ripe tropical fruit, toasted spice, and apricot. Fullbodied, with a soft, viscous texture and notes of honeyed citrus and ripe salted pineapple, it’s long on the finish, with a sunny, opulent feel. It’s approachable now or over the next 6-8 years.

Deep purple with a tinge of ruby, the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Knights Crown Vineyard has a more floral and red-fruited tone and is lifted with wet stone, pure cassis, and rosy floral perfume. Ripe with notes of framboise, fine sweet tannins, and turned soil, I find this quite attractive and well-balanced. Drink 2025-2045.

A beautiful, harmonious nose, with notes of violets and lavender honey. It’s highly fragrant, full on the palate but also weightless, clearly very light extraction. Despite this, there’s great presence and depth, it’s still young and is mostly about the texture for now. A stylish, special Grenache, that’s stylistically quite peerless, with a real tuning fork resonance on the finish. Taken from the highest section of their 1946 Grenache, planted on deep sandy soils. 50% whole berries were destemmed and placed in open fermenters, with a long, gentle maceration. Wild yeast fermented. Free run juice only, matured on lees in older, large French oak barrels and ceramic eggs for 11 months.

Dense, concentrated colour and a bouquet that suggests briars and tar/bitumen, with multiple herbs, blackberry and black cherry beneath, the palate loaded with mouth-coating tannins that complement the rich flavours. Traces of underbrush and a smidgin of tomato-bush. A big, solid, concentrated wine of long-term potential. Drink: 2026–2046

From 17ha of 1946 bush vines on a deep sandy dune. So scented/perfumed, and I’m
gone for all money without even tasting it. Its red-fruit sundae glistens with dew
drops on a spider’s web, yet also has a savoury echo on the finish

Brightness and energy with hibiscus water, lemon and dried strawberry. Full and linear with a solid column of fruit that runs the length of the wine and spirals endlessly. Integrated and melted tannins. Purity. Drink or hold.

Very floral and bright with strawberries and flowers on the nose. Intense. Medium-bodied, very transparent, and brilliant with a ruby stone sort of beauty. Very citrusy. Interesting ripe watermelon undertone to it. Drink or hold.

The purity of fruit here is impressive with a density and layered texture, with lots of integrated phenolics, citrus rind, lemon oil and white peach. White nougat and pistachio. Sesame seed, too. It’s full and very long with an intensity and beauty. Flinty and reductive at the end. Mostly Wente clone and it shows. Drink or hold.

Many years ago, I walked the early Vérité vineyard blocks with winegrower Pierre Seillan, whose take on complexity was simple, “Every hillside, every elevation and every aspect offers us a different micro-cru. From the beginning, the pure expression of these unique sites has defined our winemaking philosophy.” It makes it easy to understand the birth of the Vérité trilogy: La Joie, La Muse, and La Desire, each exploring a different grape while reflecting its Sonoma origins. In 2019 the vintage began with a healthy water supply in the soil from a warm winter of storms. Budbreak was early in what would be a warm year, complete with some heat spikes. Merlot is at the heart of la Muse, and it comes with a series of complex flavour layers. Inspired by the Pomerol style, the first release was 21 years ago. Seillan works with fifty micro-crus in Eastern Sonoma when he blends this wine. The fruit is California opulent, but Seillan plays that off against dried herbs, woodland spices, and French oak ageing to achieve a level of harmony seldom seen in California. 2019 is aged 16 months in 95 percent new French oak, and the blend is 90/5/5/ merlot, cabernet franc, and malbec from Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley, Chalk Hill, and Knights Valley.

Pale ruby-purple, the 2018 Pinot Noir The Sum has alluring scents of cranberry sauce, tea leaves, gravel dust and iron with meaty undertones and wafts of iodine. The medium-bodied palate is grainy and refreshing with concentrated, savory fruit and a flourish of spicy accents across the long, detailed finish. With its structural harmony and detailed intensity, it's a great candidate for the cellar.

The 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Speciale was aged for 24 months in French and American oak barrels and comes from several vineyards, including Lasseter, Monte Rosso, Murray Ranchand Smothers-Remick Ridge. It is incredibly expressive, at its peak between supple fruit and savory maturity. Deep ruby, the nose is surprisingly detailed, holding on to a core of black currant andcherry fruit. It offers up continually shifting nuances of dried lavender and rosemary, soy sauce, aged leather, cured beef and the iron-like mineral tones characteristic of many of the ArrowoodCabernets. Powerful but weightless, the full-bodied palate isintense and pure, with layered perfume, powdery tannins,seamless freshness and a very long finish. It will continue to hold inthe cellar for another decade. 490 cases were made.

Pale ruby-purple, the 2018 Pinot Noir Estate Cuvée has a pure,detailed perfume of lilac, blueberries, aniseed, tea leaves and woodsmoke. The medium-bodied palate has a powerful frame of grainy tannins and mouthwatering acidity that elevates its nuanced, floral flavors, and it finishes very long and layered.

Pale ruby-purple, the 2018 Pinot Noir Triple Black Slopes is powerful and perfumed! It explodes from the glass with a sultry perfume of lilac, blood orange, tea leaves and conifer with anintense core of red cherry and blueberry. The medium-bodied palate offers firm, ripe tannins and seamless acidity to support its concentrated fruit, and its long, spicy finish hints at more to come.It's a great candidate for cellaring.