Highlights

• Planted in 1971, our CCOF, dry-farmed Rutherford estate vines produce a rich and elegant Zinfandel
• Eight acres of fruit were handpicked over the course of three weeks to focus on tone and ripeness
• These grapes were sorted in the vineyard, again on the sorting table, and destemmed—not crushed
• Winemaking included punch downs by hand, 50% native-yeast fermentation and minimal intervention

Description

Vibrant, regenerative Tres Sabores, on the western Rutherford benchland, is the stage for all of the action each vintage. The theme of “estate” is fully played out in each act: from handpicking the 50-year-old vines to hand-macerating the must in open-top bins to aging in select oak to hand bottling.

Amidst a festival of Cabernet Sauvignon comes this Zinfandel, offered for one’s discovery and delight. If you find our barrel, please pause—come taste, join with me to celebrate the fact that the maker probably had less to do with the vintage, much less the elegant, spicy, delicious resolution of this wine than the well-seasoned organic, dry-farmed roots of this resilient vineyard, which, in a stressed year of extreme drought, made survival possible.

The wine is aging in a mixture of French oak barrels (33% new) from Billon, Boutes, and single-use Chardonnay-fermented barrels from Damy and Marsanny, with the goal of buoying—not masking—the floral, fragrant Zin from the ranch.

A bid on this lot brings with it a relationship with the vineyard, not just with the wine.

Wine Facts

• Single vineyard wine
• Wine was dry farmed
• Sustainably produced
• Organically produced (also commonly called "organically grown")
• Wine is 100% estate grown and bottled