the first red it's kind of our first wine to 2007 napa valley cabernet sauvignon
in two thousand seven was a very very good year in the napa valley one of the top
vintages of the two thousand
and maybe of all time could be some people are starting now
so it was a year where just like 2006 & 2008 & even 2009 a little bit
we didn't receive a lot of rain most of the rain we get in
napa valley is in January
and february
and it's interesting because we get a as much rain as they do in bordeaux only we get
in those two months and in bordeaux they might get it through out the year
and rain is important because it helps the plant to grow if you don't get enough rain
your shoots might not grow enough and you might not produced as many leaves and then therefore
your crop might not get ripe whatever crop you might have so it's very important that we
receive this rain
and it's important that we don't receive in the summer because then we don't have to worry
about picking under rain conditions we're able to sit on the vines and wait for them to ripen
so we get the perfect ripeness that we are kind of used to here
its kind of a luxury to have we're a little bit spoiled here by that so it's interesting you know if you go into the vineyard
in june and you you dig a ditch that's about sixty feet
you'll find water
and the plants you'll see the roots are going down into the
into that water to grow
eventually that water goes away
and the plant starts focusing on ripening the fruit only and not so much in growing the green foliage
so in 2007 we didn't have as much water and the plants were under stress conditions
and stress is one when the plan don't have as much water as they might need
so what happens is the plant starts focusing much earlier on on just ripening the grapes
the other consequences the great so much smaller and they have less water in them because
the plant didn't take up that much water
so consequently you get much more concentrated fruit
as a result
and then the ripening happens a little bit faster than it would have happened had
there been much more water and soil
2007 I remember as a vintage specifically
because thats when you know the plant is finished
maturing the grapes
the leaves start turning yellow
and that's when you know the planet's finished and 2007 was
well in 2006 we had it a little bit but the main vintage we were able to see the leaves turn yellow and the
plant telling us
I'm finished doing my job it's time for you to pick
so lets smell the wine
so what do you think when you smell the wine
we're all speechless
this wine is aged
about fifty percent in a we only use french oak
and it's aged about fifty sixty percent in new french oak when the rest is used several years old so we don't get a lot of barrel character
and the goal is to not hide or
dominate the character the character the wine with oak
we want the Cabernet from Napa Valley to be what shows and maybe to be lifted up or
accentuated a little bit by the oak we do use because
you do need the oak to age the wine the wine has some tannins initially when you harvest it and you're waiting for those tannins
to kind of round out when it ages
so the barrel
helps you in that regard but it also introduces flavors and how you use those flavors has
a big impact
on what the wines is going to taste like eventually so
I try to avoid having anything that tastes like butterscotch or vanilla
but maybe a little bit more subtle
so that
the flavor of Cabernet shows from Napa Valley in order to clarify the wine you have to take
it out of the barrel
every so often
and sometime you decided to homogenize it all so you take it out of the ten barrels
put it together in a tank and put it back in the same ten barrels
and sometimes you maybe you want to keep each one separate depending on
you know if there is a vintage where the the new oak portion taste significantly better
than the used old portion then significantly better than the combination
then maybe you keep them separate for a longer period of time so you can evaluate
and make your blend later on. What do you look for in color
as far as Cabernet is concerned
is it the exact component
on how you are evaluating it or
color of is very important and if you compare for example this Sarah
you see that
different varieties have different degrees a color
there are things that you can do
to have the wine have more colors but I like to present the wines that
they have naturally
so Cabernet it's it's a darker verity compared to Pinot but its not as dark as Sarah
and I think color is extremely important because you're eye
your your more attracted to things that have more color then not
so with Cabernet i think it's important to have
the rights tone of the color too so it's not a oxidizer or brick color that's a very fresh
color like this
but it's not quite as deep or dense as a Sarah because Cabernet doesn't have that amount color
Do you, do you pay attention
to how many days its on the skins or it is just when you completing the fermentation?
Yeah for sure, I do a lengthy cold soak in the beginning and a cold soak is basically
the difference between for those that don't know that cabernet or red wines and white wines
is that the white wines basically you squeeze the juice out of the grapes and you put that in a tank or barrel and you ferment
just the juice. In the case of reds all the color material on all the flavor components
are found in the grape so you take the grape off the stem and you put the all the grapes
in the tank maybe squeeze in a little bit celebrities come out
and that that's where the colors so
when you do it cold extraction at the beginning maybe you don't start fermenting right away
you'd you'd leave it cold for four to ten days is what i do
and during that period by moving in you're able to extract a lot of color at that time
then you ferment and then after you ferment there is the maceration period that's what he's talking
about
where you can continue to extract tannin so
depending on what you're phenolic structure your tannin structure is that year you can leave it on
for longer periods of time or less
I prefer more then less because you can extract a little bit more and I think it helps the wine
in aging
if you do that.