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This wine is big, bad and beautiful with firm aromas and flavors of cassis, dark cherry and other jammy red fruits with just a touch of green olive or fresh earth. The aromas are ripe without being over ripe. The oak complements the fruit and lends balance to the mid-palate. The tannin is apparent, suggesting that this wine will age gracefully, yet it is in balance with the weight of the wine. The mid-palate richness carries through to the long, mouth-watering finish.

This year’s top lots come together to exhibit aromas and flavors of sweet plum, orange pekoe and white pepper. The tannins and bright acidity find perfect balance in the ripe and luscious fruit. As is our custom, we’re releasing this wine with a few years of bottle age, making it a suitable companion for tonight’s dinner table, but it also packs the structure for the long haul in the cellar. We crafted only 700 cases, so get it while you can.

A brilliant deep ruby color whets the palate of the minds eye. The structure of this wine is bigger than the prior vintage, but the intense fruit notes of wild strawberry, raspberry and cranberry bring the tannin and the acid into balance. Beneath the fruit, orange zest and thyme add complexity. A plush mid palate, a long-juicy finish and a firm structure all work together to ensure that this wine will honor our reputation for producing wines that prove to be good dinner companions at the finest tables in the country.

Once upon a time, there was a rare wine named Merlot. Everybody wanted to drink some, but there just wasn't enough to go around. Then a lot of people decided to plant more Merlot to meet the demand... but many people didn't realize that Merlot is almost as site specific as Pinot Noir. They discovered that drinkable Merlot could be made from a lot of locations... but great Merlot came from only a few locations. RSV’s Los Carneros of Napa Valley Merlot is a wine with a sense of place. The Carneros region is perfect for the early ripening Merlot grape. Long growing season. Warm days. Cool evenings. Perfect conditions to allow the Merlot grape to achieve optimal ripeness while maintaining mouthwatering acidity. The Carneros climate helps the wine to develop flavors of dried cherry and blueberry with complex notes of dried herb with a texture that envelopes one’s tongue. Perfect for full flavored cuisine.

RSV’s Pinot Blanc leaps out of the glass to greet your olfactory sense with an aromatic explosion of honeysuckle, pear and jasmine, followed on the palate by fresh white nectarine and melon that linger far longer than expected. The wine balances a rich, indulgent and persistent mouth feel with bright, focused acidity and just begs for food. We suggest you comply.

It's odd that twenty-two years after planting our first vines, we are releasing our first Estate wine. But consider the spirit of the concept behind and beyond the narrow legal definition of "Estate." We have always been about total control from dirt to the dinner table. Our Carneros wines are, in essence, "Estate" wines. However, in the eyes of the law, only wines produced from grapes grown on vineyards adjacent to the winery where they are crushed are considered "Estate" wines. Since our winery is in the Stags Leap District, not the Carneros, we can not call our Carneros wines "Estate Grown." So, despite the fact that our wines are grown solely on our own land, our little four-and-one-half-acre hillside vineyard behind the winery in the Stags Leap District is our only "Estate" vineyard.

RSV’s 2002 single-vineyard Chardonnay has a bit more boisterous character than the 2001. Our organically farmed Three Amigos Vineyard produces beautifully expressive fruit that we gently guide into full flavored, impeccably balanced wine. Aromas leap from the glass with suggestions of apple, nectarine and vanilla. The refreshing crisp edge of the wine provides firm structure to support expansive flavors of citrus, apple, pear and almond. The finish is luscious and never ending… a natural beauty.

The 2004 harvest, earliest yet for us by two weeks, began with picking the Pinot Noir for this wine on August 10th. We take it a bit earlier than we would for a red so the grapes still have bright focused acidity. The grapes are delicately whole-cluster pressed and the juice is fermented off the skins. The resulting wine is a brilliant salmon color (wild, of course) with hints of copper. It is fresh, floral and so delicious that we must limit ourselves at the winery to just a case apiece for personal consumption, lest we drink it all.

The 1999 vintage was particularly kind to Carneros red varieties. A long growing season with just enough rain, a warm late summer and a moderate fall, led to well-balanced grapes. This wine has Old World style, showing nice structure with aromas of dried herbs and olives, yet it has the unmistakable voluptuousness of a sun-drenched, California born beauty. The color of the wine is deep, rich violet. It has aromas of stemmy dark fruit backed by a delicate hint of clove and bayleaf. Dark plum and velvety cocoa dance with dried cherries and smooth annins. The result is a wine that combines a respect for its forbears with a singularity of place nurtured and accentuated by RSVs dedication to organic and biodynamic farming methods. Terroir Lives!