I recently gave a vineyard manager a tour of this site. His comment was that he could understand why I wanted fruit from this vineyard, but also commented that it would be an exceptionally expensive site to farm, which, of course, we are all too painfully aware of. At its current production, the wine needs to sell for about $70/bottle for it to pencil out. Since we do not sell $70/bottle wine, we and the owners are working hard to keep improving the quality while bringing production up to what would be considered an absolutely absurd low level by almost anyone else's standards.

We harvest this vineyard block by block. There are four main blocks of pinot noir scattered over the hillsides. Oddly enough, the block we call "suicide hill" because of its extreme slope, produces the most elegant wine. The upper hill block, which, if not level, is at least farmable, produces the blackest, most tannic, most concentrated wine. It also consistently produces the largest crop, which this last year topped one ton per acre for the first time. We vinify and age each lot separately. We chose a total of four barrels of wine out of the vineyard for this blend, with the balance being used for the Cuvèe de Trois.

It is very dark for pinot noir, or at least for our pinot noir. The aromas are intriguing and a bit elusive. Plums, wild cherries, forest floor, and spice all come to mind, but there is an element I can best describe as black apple as well. I am not sure that there is such a thing, but, if apples were black instead of red in their character, then that is what I find in this. The wine is seriously structured but has enough sweetness of fruit to balance the tannins, rendering it quite supple. We have tasted this wine over the course of several days and it shows nice development, softening and opening each day. For that reason I expect it to age well. 96 cases bottled.

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