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The 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon is a wonderful wine with deep color, a rich cedar, mint and fruit nose, a mouth filling flavor and delicate refined tannins. It has well integrated vanilla-y oak and lots and lots of a really nice black pepper character. It is drinkable right now, but should age very well for ten or twelve years.

This wine is really two wines in one; half of the wine was fermented in oak to give it richness, butteriness and complexity, while the other half was fermented very cold to retain the lovely “fruit” character that typifies really golden-ripe Chardonnay grapes. This combination is the perfect way to make Chardonnay. The nose is rich and complex with bright apple-fruit and more “deep” tropical-fruit and toasty oak characteristics. The smells come through in the rich-round mouth-feeling flavors. On top of the apple and tropical flavors there is a medley of spice notes—particularly celery-seed, cinnamon and vanilla.

This wine was a tiny lot—just two barrels. From the day I first tasted them, they seemed special. There was no particular reason that I would have expected these two barrels to be different, it just seemed that every time I tasted through the barrels of our 2001 KRW Petite Sirah these two stood out as something exceptional. Come bottling time I just couldn’t bring myself to add them to the blend, so I kept them out, allowed them to age a third year in barrel and bottled them as a special lot. I then left the wine in bottle for an additional two years to age before release.

'Late Harvest' doesn't just mean 'sweet'; it also means that the grapes were infected with the 'Noble Rot', Botrytis cinerea. This rot, which grows in its 'noble' form only under certain conditions of humidity and temperature, rarely occurs in California. But when it does, wine made from grapes infected with it make the most wonderful wines in the world. This Gewurztraminer is a beauty - it has all the spicy charm of the ideoscratic and somewhat esoteric Gewurztraminer grape layered into and around the incredible earthy and organic characters of the Botrytis rot.

Once again, black pepper is in abundance, but also tons of rich fruit—ripe blueberries and raspberries. Petite in its youth has seriously opulent fruit and this wine shows it to perfection. The tannins are balanced in the wine—strong, but not too strong, and synergistic with the acid and alcohol level. More than anything, you will notice the rich fruit.

This is the 20th vintage of Pinot Noir that I have made from the eleven acres of grapes grown on our Carneros estate. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to “fine-tune” each block in this vineyard to give me exactly what I want, allowing me to create what is, in my mind, an almost perfect Pinot Noir. I find it funny that vastly different grapes can come from such a small area; there are vine rows that I know will give me dense fruity characters, and other rows that I know will contribute structure; part of the vineyard gives a distinct blueberry character, while another part has more bramble-berry flavor. It has taken me years to learn these differences, and every year I still find something new. The 2005 is a wonderful wine, structurally much like 2004, but with far more refined Pinot Noir fruit characters. I have reduced the amount of oak for this particular vintage, because I didn’t want to “muddy-up” these lovely characteristics. In the nose, you’ll find that wonderful palette of aromas that Carneros is famous for: brambles, dark cherries, and coffee. The mouth follows through with these characters, but is so rich and full of classic Pinot Noir fruit that it is almost explosive. This wine is truly a stunning creation.

This is truly a one-of-a-kind release. I can't really believe that I made this wine, but it was so much fun! The grapes came from a tiny old vineyard in the Napa Valley. They were absolutely perfect for port when they were harvested, sweet, just starting to raisin with a fantastic flavor density. Port is truly “made-in-the-vineyard” and this one shows it big-time; beautifully balanced, with just the right sweetness level and enough tannin and fruit to bring fireworks to the end of any meal. The few people who have stopped by the winery and tried this, have fallen in love.