Ravenswood Winery
2008 Sonoma Mountain Pickberry Red Wine
Red Blend •Pickberry Vineyard
Sonoma Mountain
Mission Briefing
So Ravenous
ALERT: Today’s wine will sell out, so please make your purchase soon.
We are just thrilled to bring you an incredible wine at an unbeatable price, today. Agent Red cleverly raided Ravenswood Winery of every last bottle of their Single Vineyard Designate red blend, the delicious 2008 Ravenswood Pickberry Vineyard Red Wine.
Our entire tasting panel was floored by this delicious blend of 59% Merlot, 39% Cabernet Sauvignon, 1% Malbec and 1% Petit Verdot. Especially at today’s 60% off price.
This is a truly divine wine that reminds us of the best of Pomerol AOC, infused with classic Sonoma Mountain terroir. And while we are offering the wine at a great price, it is very highly recommended at any price.
Tasting Profile
| Look: | Deep and slightly opaque with dark garnet to dark purple hues. |
|---|---|
| Smell: | This aromatic wine is all dark fruit, leather and spice. Fruits lead the way, with black cherry, blackberry, blueberry, plum and cassis. These are followed by hard leather and sweet brown spice. Beneath all of that, a lovely and very subtle hint of spearmint adds a lovely lift on the nose. |
| Taste: | Delicious and bursting with juicy flavors of blackberry, dark cherry juice and cassis with a rich black cherry and blueberry compote. These sit atop lovely leather, black pepper and sweet spice. |
| Finish: | Very long and lingering with great structure and softly drying medium tannins. |
| Pairing: | Enjoy this very elegant wine with something equally elegant. We can’t wait to enjoy a few bottles with a rare filet Mignon with mushrooms in a red wine reduction. |
What the Winery Says
PICKBERRY RED WINE - SINGLE VINEYARD DESIGNATE, 2008
What does it take to become a Ravenswood Single Vineyard Designate? A location ideally suited to the great variety planted in it: old, low-yielding vines grown by meticulous and experienced growers; specific, consistently distinctive flavors that make this a unique; and, one can’t help but speculate, some unseen magic that this does it with an inimitable aura.
WINEMAKER’S NOTES
The Pickberry Vineyard is located on the slopes of Sonoma Mountain on the western side of the Sonoma Valley. Pickberry Vineyard got its name many years ago by then-twoyear-old Kristin Strotz, daughter of owners Cris and Lorna Strotz, due to the irresistible blackberry vines that grow on the property. Pickberry fruit (in this case grapes, as opposed to blackberries) has traditionally produced opulent, berry-saturated, Bordeaux-style wines.
The 2008 Pickberry is dark and dense in appearance with perfumed, ripe Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, and Petit Verdot aromas. Scents of red currant, cured tobacco leaf, and musk herald the chewy cassis flavors that highlight the impressively dense, spicy, mineral-driven, and remarkably soft floral finish. This wine will age to graceful elegance in 10 to 15 years.
- COMPOSITION
- 59% Merlot, 39% Cabernet Sauvignon, 1% Malbec, 1% Petit Verdot
- APPELLATION
- Sonoma Mountain
- AGING
- 22 months in 100% French oak; 45% new
- SKIN CONTACT
- 12–18 days
- TA
- 6.2 g/L
- pH
- 3.62
- ALCOHOL
- 13.7%
- RELEASE DATE
- July 2011
- PRODUCTION
- 600 cases
- AGEABILITY
- Drink between now and 10–15 years
About the Winery
Ravenswood wines are powerful personalities – down-to-earth, elegantly rustic and robust. From our flock of Single Vineyard Designate wines, as unique as the individual vineyards they’re from and the people that farm them, to the County Series wines that capture the spirit of California’s best growing regions and the popular Vintners Blend bottlings sourced from vineyards throughout California, we strive to put what we pick from the fields right into the bottle. Unadulterated, unapologetic, unfussy, umwimpy.
Winemaker Joel Peterson
Joel Peterson has been into wine since he was 10, when his father asked him to take tasting notes for his parents’ East Bay wine tasting group. In 1976, at the age of 29, he and business partner Reed Foster, whom he met in that group, started Ravenswood with $4,000, no vineyards and no winery. For labor, they called all their friends to help for free.
“I went through a lot of friends in the first year,” Joel says.
He’s among the men most responsible for establishing Zinfandel as a world-class grape. This winemaker is a strong advocate of terroir, the French idea of showcasing a vineyard’s distinctive climate and soils through the unique flavor of the wine produced there.
Joel Peterson is unusual in that he makes Zinfandel to age. His wines are often more tannic than the current trend for ultra-ripe fruit, and not all are at their best immediately upon release. They start to resemble aged Bordeaux about 11 years after harvest. Many reach a nice balance of aged complexity with Zin-like character about six to eight years after harvest.