Foothills

We start this blend in the vineyard, drawing from our blocks whose wines want to be fresh, wide eyed, earnest even. While our reserve lots call for an approach that favors structure and concentration, here we work so that we can drink now, capturing inherent complexity from the fermenter with an eye on our most dexterous red wine.
Wine Description: The 2018 Foothills is based in Merlot, a grape known for its plush, black-fruited flavors. We have that here, but we also find the smoky, peppered, herbal-mint combination of the Cabernet Franc and Syrah roaming the periphery of the aromas and flavors. These accents and the dash of sit-up-straight structure from the Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon provide counterpoint to the wine’s fruit-given charm. This year we played with a small addition of Petit Manseng which gives the wine an unexpected juiciness and gathers the aromas of all the blending components into a ball and thrusts them up to the olfacto-sphere where they float and dance along.