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.