Fidelitas Wines

Auction of Washington Wines: Win a Full Barrel Winemaking Experience

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Own a Piece of Red Mountain: A Vintner’s Experience

Full Barrel Winemaking Experience with Fidelitas and Quintessence Vineyard

This year’s Auction of Washington Wines’ Industry Honorees, Charlie Hoppes and Marshall Edwards have generously donated a full barrel of red wine from the acclaimed Quintessence Vineyard, but that is only a part of this amazing auction lot!

The winning bidder will become an honorary Vintner at Fidelitas. This unique experience will make their winery, your winery, not just for one year, but for years to come, as you harvest, blend, and bottle your own Red Mountain wine.

You will be invited to begin your journey during Harvest 2018. You and your guests will be involved in selecting grapes from Quintessence and Shaw Vineyards on Red Mountain, seeing them through the sorting process, and starting fermentation in the tanks. As the wines age in barrel, join us for your second trip to experience a hands-on blending trial with Fidelitas Winemaker, Charlie Hoppes. You will be able to taste barrel samples and blend with other varietals from the vineyards as the team comes up with their 2018 vintage wines.

The third and final trip will include bottling of your exclusive wines from your personal barrel. After your day on the bottling line, you will have ownership of 25 cases of wines that you can distribute as you see fit. Enjoy with friends, give to employees as gifts, or cellar to enjoy for years to come.

With each visit, two couples will enjoy hotel accommodations, meals, vineyard tours and library tastings to immerse yourself in the history of the winery and vineyard.

This lot includes:

• One barrel of your own custom created and blended wine (25 cases total!)
• Label design by an award-winning creative agency
• Three separate trips to Red Mountain; for harvest, blending, and bottling of your wine. Each trip will be for two couples and includes accommodations and special Red Mountain experiences.

One barrel contains approximately 300 bottles (25 cases) of wine. All Red Mountain experiences are based on a mutually agreed upon date. Transportation to Red Mountain not included.

News from the Winery + Vineyards

As we come in to the end of April, I thought I’d take the time to talk a little bit about what’s going on here at the winery and in the vineyard.

We’re working hard in the cellar.  Already, we’ve bottled some of the 2017 whites, including Quintessence Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, which came out of the Ovium Barrel, and later this week will be the Semillon. With the Optu White Wine, we are going to let things age out a little bit longer.  We have equal parts of the Sauvignon Blanc for this blend in our new concrete egg, and in the standard French Oak that we’ve used in the past.  We want to see what each component is like and can bring to the blend and will either use one or the other, or maybe a mixture of both in the final blend.  Overall, we like to give the Optu White just a little more time to pick up some creaminess and a bit more flavor.

On the reds side, we’re doing some testing with letting the 4040 spend some time in the oak upright tanks before bottling.  That blend doesn’t get a bunch of oak aging otherwise, so we’ll see what this ‘flashing’ at the end does as far as boosting the final product.  This is another example of how we aren’t ever following the same recipe and are always willing to try new things to make excellent wines.  Beyond that, in June we’re planning to start bottling some 2016 reds, including that 4040, as well as some Malbec, and Merlot, and then the Cabernets and bigger blends will fall later in to the summer.

4040 spending it's final days in Oak Upright tanks, prior to June bottling

Out in the vineyard we’re starting to see some bud break, and it’s like we’re starting anew.  Like in the fall, when we’re in the cellar and starting to make wine again, you feel like you’re starting a new vintage.  Really, that vintage starts right now when you’re starting to see some growth and are starting to prune things a certain way.  I think one of the things that is great to see is that there is a lot of new planting on Red Mountain.  A lot of the fruit we take, and wines that we make, are from these newer sites.  This includes Quintessence, which was planted in 2010, and we took the first crop in 2012.  Same thing with The Canyons Vineyard, that was planted in 2009, and we took our first crop in 2012 as well.  As these vineyards age out, I think that these wines are going to settle and even out, and we’re excited to work with them long term.

Bud break in the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard

The other thing that is exciting for us to see is getting to third leaf in our new planting of the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard.  These are the 9 acres we planted in 2015, that we will now be coming in to perhaps half production this year, based on what we’ve seen so far.  This is really going to give us the chance to see what the wines might be like.  Not only with some new Cabernet Sauvignon clones that we planted out there, like 412, 33, 169, but also some clones 2 and 6 in addition to the original planting of 2, 6, and 8.  We’ll also be looking at how the Merlot is going to come on, as well as the Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Cabernet Franc.  We’re really looking forward to seeing how those are going to start turning out and are thinking about the next chapter of the vineyard.

Exploring the new plantings of the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard

Overall, on Red Mountain, things look good.  We’re maybe a little bit behind a normal year, but as we know, a nice little heat boost along the way can push things forward really quickly.  Already, we are scheduled to get to 86 later this week, which is really warm for the end of the April, and believe me, will push shoot growth and get us closer to a normal year.

As far as newly released wines, we are focusing a lot on Quintessence Vineyard right now.  I really think that this is a great vineyard.  The main blocks we take from give us extreme southern aspect, we are working with some great clones, and probably the most essential part of the vineyard, is the human factor on the terroir and what a great job they are doing there.  The Sauvignon Blanc, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon are all tasting great upon release.

Vendimia 2018 - Making Some Argentinian Malbec

Back in 1988 as a recent graduate from UC Davis' Viticulture and Enology graduate program, my dad was hired by Mike Januik (a fellow Davis grad) at Snoqualmie/Langguth near Mattawa, WA for his first winemaking job.  After doing a harvest at Waterbrook in 1990, he rejoined Mike as a part of the winemaking team at Chateau Ste. Michelle, and worked alongside him for just under a decade, becoming the head red winemaker in '93 as Mike was serving as the head winemaker.  They worked on the the first few vintages of the Col Solare project together from '95 to '98 and helped push Washington onto the world scene with the wines they crafted together during their time at the Chateau.  Itching to start their own projects they both left around 1999, Mike staying on the west side of the state and creating Januik and my dad starting Fidelitas on the eastside.  But you probably know this already, it's been well documented and touted by us throughout years.  

What you may not know is that Mike's son, Andrew, who apparently I spent a lot of time hanging out with when I was too young to remember, has stepped into a winemaking role at Januik, and has his own "Andrew Januik" label since 2011.  He started working part time at the winery when he was 13 and shortly after started working full time during the summers - a sentence that sounds all too familiar to me.  

Since starting to manage our Woodinville tasting room about a year ago I reconnected with Andrew - which felt natural to say least with how much we had in common with our lives following very similar paths.  After many glasses of wine, nights at karaoke bars, times spent dog-sitting for him, and quests to find the best beers in Seattle we became good friends and thought it'd be and awesome idea for me to join him for a Malbec project he had going in the famed Uco Valley region of Mendoza, Argentina.  Not wanting to pass up on the opportunity to travel and learn from a talented winemaker like Andrew it was a no-brainer.  Below are some highlights of past few weeks spent harvesting in Argentina:

We flew into Buenos Aires after a layover in London (this is what happens when you buy tickets at the last minute) and spent 1 night there before heading over to Mendoza.  We spent hours and hours exploring the city with plenty of stops to drink beer and play cards:

Then over to Finca Agostino in Mendoza to check in on Andrew's 2017 Vintage:

Checking our fruit the day before the first pick:

Note how high these Cabernet vines are planted

Malbec

Cabernet

First day of crush at O Fournier

Early Morning Pumpovers with a view

If it weren't for the snow-capped Andes in the background you'd think this was Eastern WA

Before and after pumpovers

With plenty of breaks for empanadas

Inoculation

Thanks to Andrew for letting me tag along. 

There's so much I can take away from this trip to help me in my winemaking journey. 

Make sure to go taste his wines if you haven't yet!

Come see me in the tasing room this weekend!

Charlie is Named as the 2018 Honorary Vintner for the Auction of Washington Wines

Fidelitas Owner + Winemaker, Charlie Hoppes, named

2018 Honorary Vintner

by the Auction of Washington Wines

 

As Charlie marks 30 years of making wine in Washington, we are thrilled to announce that he has been named the Honorary Vintner by his industry peers for the 2018 Auction of Washington Wines.

 

This recognition is reserved for people who have exemplified leadership in the industry, and for those who have made significant contributions to the Washington wine community. Charlie shares this honor with the Honorary Grower, Marshall Edwards, who manages Quintessence Vineyard, a favored site for Fidelitas on Red Mountain.

 

“Charlie and Marshall both reflect what makes the Washington wine community so special,” said Shelley Tomberg, Executive Director of AWW. “Their sincerity in building relationships is inspiring, and it results in top-notch, innovative, premium Washington wines that influence the industry on a global scale.”

 

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We look forward to celebrating Charlie, while supporting the mission of the Auction of Washington Wines, at events coming up this spring and summer on Red Mountain and in Woodinville: LEARN MORE

 

Read more about Charlie's history of Washington winemaking.

Quintessence Vineyard

With 3 different releases coming out of one of our favorite vineyard sites next month I wanted to look at the history of our relationship with Quintessence vineyard and what makes their site so special.

History

Quintessence is a young site with the first phase of planting taking place in 2010.  The first fruit we pulled from this initial phase was cabernet in 2012 which blew us away with the quality for such young vines.  So much so, that we decided to blend the clones 169 and 191 Cab into a single vineyard Cabernet, and our Optu Red Mountain for that same year was 47% sourced from Quintessence.  This was the beginning of a love affair – since then we’ve made 3 more single vineyard cabs (always sourced from those same French ENTAV clones), 2 single vineyard sauv blancs, a new single vineyard malbec, and likely more vineyard designated wines to come.

Slope

While the general slope of Red Mountain gently angles to the Southwest, Quintessence is slightly more Southeastern facing right into the teeth of the morning sun.  This early morning heat and rocky top layer that retains and reflects that solar energy is why I think Quintessence is consistently one of the first sites to ripen in the AVA and results in extremely concentrated wines across the board.

Management

An incredible vineyard site can only take you so far if it's not placed in the right hands.  Luckily Quintessence has Marshall Edwards to look after it, who like my dad, has over 3 decades of experience managing some of the best vineyards in Washington to draw on.  It's great that the two of them have known each other for so long too, because Marshall enjoys harassing my dad: last time we were there for harvest a couple days before the first pick he told him that "all of the work was done - now don't mess things up."

One of the most unique aspects of Quintessence is all the different clones of Cabernet that are planted there: go wild and explore their interactive map.  In one block you can taste the sweet, bright, red fruit, large clone 8 clusters and walk 10 yards to another block and taste the lower yielding ENTAV clones where the taste of the thick skins and seeds is much more present and the fruit tone darker.

Harvest 2017 - making sure Marshall hadn't messed anything up

Quintessence Clone 8 Cab

Barrel Tasting

Often the winemaking team isn't sure what wines are going to be released for the upcoming year until they go through and taste all of the finished wine in barrel and see if anything jumps out at them.  This is where we get small production releases such as Canyons Malbec, Ciel du Cheval Petit Verdot, Old Vines Merlot, and the upcoming April release Quintessence Malbec which will likely never make it to the tasting bar for long.  

Tasting 2016 Quintessence Cab

More Information

http://www.quintessencevineyards.com/about.php

http://www.greatnorthwestwine.com/2017/05/09/marshall-edwards-grows-some-of-washingtons-top-wines/

http://www.greatnorthwestwine.com/2014/07/16/marshall-edwards-stands-behind-some-of-largest-washington-vineyards/

 

Happy New Year from Charlie

Dear Friends of Fidelitas:

2017 proved to be a great year for Fidelitas. The Fidelitas Estate Vineyard is continuing to develop, and the other vineyards we source fruit from on Red Mountain are outstanding. The future looks bright for the wines we will continue to make.

This fall, in addition to pulling fruit from the 2009 planting, we were able to harvest a little bit from our 2015 Estate Vineyard planting.  We are eager to see how these young wines mature over the months ahead.  Also in September, we released our third Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2014.  If these first three vintages are any indication of the future of our Estate, then the future looks good.  I have been very happy with the wines we have made from our own vineyard. With 2014 being one of the warmest vintages on record, we really looked to make these wines very consistent and a true reflection of Red Mountain.

We also released our last wine ever for Fidelitas from Champoux Vineyard, closing a long term working relationship with Paul and Judy Champoux. With Paul’s retirement following the 2014 vintage, we decided this would be the last Champoux Vineyard wine we would make. This is, to say the least, the end of an era for Fidelitas. We made our first Champoux Cabernet Sauvignon in 2002. In total, we made 27 wines from 13 vintages from Champoux Vineyard. Many of you enjoyed these wines over the years when we expanded our offerings to Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon from Block 1 and our Cabernet Franc based blend we called Magna. Paul and Judy have been great to work with over the years and we all will have lasting memories every time we open these wines from our cellars. Check with any of our team members to see what might still be available from Champoux Vineyard.

Looking forward to 2018, we have many great wines we are extremely excited about from the 2015 vintage of red wines as well as some very unique 2017 white wines to look forward to. As many of you know, we make wines from many sites on Red Mountain, giving us a great cross section of what the mountain has to offer. A few highlights of exciting new offers we will have in the upcoming year will include a 2015 Old Vine Merlot from Ciel Du Cheval and Kiona Vineyards. This wine comes from some of the first plantings on Red Mountain from both the Holmes and Williams families from the mid-1970s. We feel fortunate to have been able to source this fruit and look forward to sharing this with all of you. 2015 will also be the first vintage of Malbec sourced from Quintessence Vineyard. We currently make a Cabernet Sauvignon for this vineyard as well as limited release Sauvignon Blanc. Having the Malbec will be a nice addition. I have had a chance recently to go back and try some of the upcoming 2015 vintage releases and am looking forward to sharing some really stellar wines.

As always, we aim to continually try and improve our wines from Fidelitas. We continue to experiment with oak fermentation, use new barrels we have never worked with before and pushing the envelope in winemaking to continually improve.

Fidelitas exists as a winery because of our faithful customers. Thank you for your continued support. Many of you have been with us from our very first vintages and we truly appreciate your loyalty.  We are All in on Red Mountain!

Happy New Year!

Harvest 2017...done!

And just like that, the 2017 harvest is done.  The grapes brought in were lovingly turned in to some top notch juice, and are now nestled in to their barrels to rest for a bit.  We saw our first fruit of the season, Sauvignon Blanc and then Semillon, come in from Klipsun Vineyard just after Labor Day.  Reds started to come in just after that.  Mostly from the eastern facing Quintessence Vineyard, but we worked our way west with the sun, and finished up by picking our own Fidelitas Estate Vineyard in mid-October.  It is wonderful and challenging to have all of our fruit from the smallest, and warmest, AVA in the state.  Everything ripens at about the same time, all vying for space in the cellar.  Charlie and his crew worked around the clock to keep things moving along, and just took their first weekend off a few days ago.

A special shout out to Charlie, who just completed his 30th harvest in Washington state.  His first winemaking job, fresh out of UC Davis, was at the start of crush in 1988 at Langguth/Saddle Mountain, and he’s never looked back.  We have just a handful of winemakers in Washington nowadays who can claim three decades, and I’m proud to be working with one of them.  When I asked him about this 2017 harvest, here is what he said:

"This has the potential to be one of my top 5 vintages. Already, the wines are showing great promise, like those in 2009 or 2012. In 2017, we had cooler weather than recent vintages, and longer hang times which really led to the development of flavors. It was a lower crop overall, contributed to the high quality of fruit we brought in. Of course, we still need time to see how they age out, but everyone is blown away by it now." - Charlie Hoppes, Fidelitas Owner + Winemaker

 

 

Fidelitas Harvest Update, September 25

Harvest is in full swing on Red Mountain, with fruit coming in quickly to find it's place in the cellar.  Here is where we are so far:

We are 80% completed with Merlot.  We have a new block of Blackwood Canyon Merlot along with the old block at Kiona remaining.

Fidelitas Estate Merlot, picked September 21

Quite a bit of Quintessence Cab Sauv has been picked and in tank or barrel already.  We have completed block 7 (clone 169), block 9 ( clone 191), Block 10 ( clone 8) and block 47 (clone 2)

Tasting fruit in Quintessence Vineyard

The white wines are progressing nicely through fermentation.  There is distinct difference in the “ovium” barrel and just regular barrels.  The Ovium barrel will be the limited release Quitessence Sauvignon Blanc.  The Klipsun Sauvignon Blanc & Semillon are really nice as a result of a little cooler vintage.

The Ovium: one of a kind in the U.S., made specifically for Sauvignon Blanc

We are enjoying a little cooler weather than in the most recent vintages.  Last week we had several days with the high’s of the day in the 60’s.  That trend will change slightly this week to a few days in the lower 80’s. This should move ripening along nicely. The quality of the vintage shows promise and reminds me a lot of 2012.  This is a somewhat of a  normal vintage, we just have not seen one for a while.

New signage in the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard

The plan is to continue to harvest and ferment all the new estate blocks separately and see how each block expresses itself.  We do have Estate Merlot fermenting in a tank and we will keep you up to date on its progress.

We should start to see some Malbec and other Cab Sauv coming in the next 10 days.

 

More to come as more fruit arrives!

Red Mountain: How We Got Here

This upcoming harvest will be my 30th, and I can easily say that I’ve seen night and day differences in the Washington wine industry over the last three decades.

I was hired out of UC Davis in 1988 by Mike Januik to work at FW Langguth, just outside of Mattawa.  Our emphasis was definitely on white wines: Riesling, Chenin Blanc, and some Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.  We did a few reds (Cabernet, Merlot, and Lemberger) but they were somewhat of an afterthought, and 90% of our production at that facility was sweet, fruity whites that would be released by Thanksgiving of each vintage.

At FW Langguth with daughter Emily, who called the grapes "peas", in 1988.

At this point in time, the industry was still fairly small, and grapes were somewhat hard to come by.  Chateau Ste. Michelle was dominating the industry, with a few small others starting to emerge, like Preston and Hogue.  There were probably less than 35 wineries in the industry at that time.  There weren’t as many opportunities or money in the industry, employment wise, but it was a great start for initial perspective.

This probably puts me in the realm of someone who is a veteran in Washington.  There aren’t many of us who have been around that long who are still at it now.  Maybe David Forsyth, Mike Januik, Joy Andersen, Doug Gore, Gordy Hill, and Brian Carter to name just a few.  Not too many people!

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When I reflect on 30 years in the industry, and think of where it has been and where it is going, I feel optimistic for our future.  We’ve accomplished a lot in the time it has been going on, but I think we’re in a great place and poise to make an impact on the world of wine.  Today, it’s easier than ever to enter the business in Washington, and we’ve found a lot of great grape growing sites over the decades.  There are new opportunities, that even California wineries are taking advantage of by moving to the Northwest.  We still make a lot of white, but often those are lower price blends from larger companies.  At Fidelitas, 90% of our production is red wine.  We’ve been able to find some really nice white grapes on Red Mountain, but our focus is really on the reds, as evidenced by what is planted in our own vineyard.  This is really a trend for Red Mountain as a whole, and different from where I began, with 95% of its planted acres dedicated to red grapes.

Washington is differentiated from the old world, really by the market forces.  Unlike France, there is no one telling us what we can plant where, and that has opened us up to being able to adjust with the marketplace demand without having to ask permission first.  We can always plant, and pull, depending on what works in a vineyard site, and in the market.  On Red Mountain, we are seeing that the plantings are mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, and probably 90% of the red grapes Bordeaux varietals.  There are some other varietals planted as well, but in smaller quantities.  Right now, I think that shows us the demand and where that is leading us in the future.

I, and now Fidelitas, was drawn to Red Mountain based on the wines that we were making, and wanted to focus on more.  I always knew that I wanted to make Red Mountain wines, but the access to the fruit was so limited.  We had to look elsewhere for fruit when we first started, and before I could ever make the wines that we are making today, I was tasting wines from other wineries who were able to get Red Mountain fruit.  In the early 2000’s, that meant that grapes were sourced mainly from Klipsun, Kiona, Ciel du Cheval, Red Mountain Vineyard, and a bit of Hedges Estate.

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More than just Red Mountain has changed since 1989.

I’ll always remember my first visit to Red Mountain, and it’s a story I’ve told many times, because it was the day my daughter Allison was born.  I was at Lemberger Days at Kiona, on June 11, 1989, pouring Lemberger for Snoqualmie winery.  That day, we drove around with my wife, Terri, her mom, and my first daughter, Emily.  It was a warm day, with just a small crowd, maybe 50-60 people, and Don Mercer gave a long speech about the benefits of Lemberger and how great it’d be in the future.  Ali was born later that evening.

In 1988, Red Mountain had just a pothole infested gravel road that went up the mountain and was otherwise inhabited by just apple orchards, sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and just a few vineyards.  Still, I thought this could really be something someday.  Trying the wines from this region, I could see they were different, intense, and special.

I worked at Chateau Ste. Michelle beginning in 1990, and as head red winemaker starting in 1993, and by 1998, found myself at a crossroads in my career, ready to try my own style.  With a big winery like that, you can become a career winemaker and retire with the company, or decide to create something on your own. At that time, it wasn’t as common to have a label within the company, so I ventured out with the encouragement of family to start my own brand.

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I feel like the first 30 years of my career could be called a pioneering stage.  I made a lot of great wines from a lot of great vineyard sites, and growing regions, but now that we’ve been making Red Mountain wines since 2005, I’ve decided to completely focus our line up on Red Mountain.  When I look at Red Mountain, I know that this is a region that can stand the test of time, and that is evidenced by the wines made by those 40+ year old vines.  Everyone in the state gravitates to Red Mountain to make a really great, concentrated, tannic wine.  That’s the style I thought I wanted to make, and although I couldn’t access Red Mountain fruit for our first vintage in 2000, we did find some great vineyards like Weinbau, Windrow, and of course, Champoux Vineyard.  By 2005, we were able to add Red Mountain fruit to the line up and are now all in on this one region.

I still feel like we are just touching the tip of the iceberg on the potential of Red Mountain.  I say that with a biased Red Mountain or Washington palate, but have tasted wines from all over the world, with Bordeaux and California as our competitive framework, and really feel like what we can do on Red Mountain can be every bit as good as those wines.  Certainly, they are different, but I’m bullish on the future, and know that Red Mountain will be thought of in the same sense as all of those great growing regions of the world.

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Today, our product line up - outside of Ciel du Cheval, and some anomalies like the old vines of Blackwood Canyon Vineyard, and Kiona Vineyard – is sourced from vineyards that are fairly young, including Quintessence Vineyard (planted in 2008), the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard, and the Canyons Vineyard (both planted in 2009).  For the most part, we are just starting to see how these vineyards will show in the future, including our own Estate.  It’s an exciting time.  The winemaking style is constantly evolving, and I don’t feel like it’s ever totally figured out or dialed in, like you may see in California where blocks and barrels are determined without a ton of variation each vintage.  Our own style is still emerging somewhat, and at least until the Estate Vineyard is totally up and going, and we continue to move forward with other vineyard sites on the mountain.

On the winemaking side, we’re constantly evolving as well.  One of our newer focuses is fermentation in the presence of oak, which started in 2011 and 2012 vintage reds with oak uprights and roller fermenters.  This year, we’ll add a few closed top oak fermenters, that will be used in the 2017 vintage, and enable us to have at least 50% of our reds fermented in wood.  Over the years, our product line up that once included Chardonnay and Syrah, has been focused on Bordeaux varietals.  In 2007, our physical presence on Red Mountain, and then the planting of our Estate Vineyard in 2009, guided that focus.  It’s what I’m most comfortable and familiar with after my 30 years, and seems to be a natural fit for Fidelitas.

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I am really excited to see what the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard is going to give us.  The first few vintages have been great, and we’ll see more come on line beginning in the 2017 vintage.  We always felt that establishing ourselves, with a tasting room and vineyard, on Red Mountain would be sustainable for future generations to pass on.  This was a goal that we discussed when we first started to build Fidelitas, and are continuing to chat about as we look towards the future. 

Designed with the Club in Mind

I recently sat down with my staff to think about the real benefits of being a Club member, beyond just what we print in the Club brochure.  Every member of Team Fidelitas contributed their ideas, and we came up with over 2 pages of notes.  From that exercise, one of the items that stuck out to me most is that we truly make wines just for Club members.

Now – that is an easy thing to say for some.  “Club-exclusive” is a common thing to see at wineries.  However, I realized that it is so much more than that at Fidelitas.  One of part of my job is to work with Charlie and design how our releases will look up to 3 years in advance.  Already, we are talking about which wines we want to make from grapes that will be harvested this upcoming fall.  That means, we are having discussions about how much fruit to buy 5 months from now to make a wine that won’t be released until 3 years from now.  We are looking at spreadsheets, and forecasts, and weather patterns, just to determine what wines we’ll make for just our Club members.  This isn’t an after the fact decision.  Your Club allocation is truly chosen by Charlie 3 years before you will take it home.  Over the course of those 3 years, Charlie is ensuring that wine in your allocation is “one of the best we’ve ever made” (one of our favorite Charlie-isms).

Our 2013 Red Heaven Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is exactly one of those wines.  We make this wine in exceptional vintages, where the fruit is just perfect to make a vineyard designated wine.  After much fussing, we settled on making just 96 cases - not even enough to include in a Club shipment, but still special enough to make sure that it is a Club only wine.  Designed, starting in spring of 2013, with the Club in mind.  

Charlie, walking the vines in Red Heaven Vineyard.