Storybook Mountain
2009 Estate Antaeus
Red Blend •Storybook Estate
California: Napa Valley
Mission Briefing
Storybook Romance
We are so thrilled to welcome back the multi-award-winning Storybook Mountain Vineyards. Storybook has been one of our most popular wineries over the last six plus years. For good reason, too… their wines are always incredible.
Today’s Storybook Mountain 2009 Antaeus is a delicious and very elegant blend (of 51% Zinfandel, 37% Cabernet, 8% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot) that our tasting panel went absolutely wild for. This wine is rich, abundant, and just plain joy inducing on the nose and on the palate.
Please accept your mission, and this wine, with our heartiest recommendation.
Tasting Profile
| Look: | Very pretty, with dark purple edges and a deep ruby center. |
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| Smell: | Zinny and delightful, with blackberry syrup, briar patch, young sweetwood, dried violet, black tea leaf, New England dried fall leaves, and chocolate covered espresso beans. |
| Taste: | Dark and very lush with stewed mixed berry, braised plum, young sweetwood, black tea, dark dried violets, allspice, briar and dried fall leaves. |
| Finish: | Very long and very lush with an extended elegant feel and flavors that tail off very gradually. At the end, a lovely dryness gradually spreads across the palate. |
| Pairing: | Enjoy this lush and flavorful wine with a hearty Moroccan lamb Tagine. |
What the Winery Says
Storybook Mountain 2009 Antaeus
- Tasting Notes
- Antaeus, the son of Water and Earth in Greek mythology, is the symbol of strength derived from the soil. So too this wine, deriving strength from the matching of site and grape on every part of our land. The aromatics are primarily Napa Cabernet, with all the richness that connotes; the body has Zinfandel’s sensual fruit and fullness, but the finish comes through with the structured, sinewy aspect of the Bordeaux varieties. The 2009 Antaeus is composed of 51% Zinfandel, 37% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Petit Verdot and 4% Merlot. The intensity derived from red clay soils is here in full, while the coolness of our site provides the acid balance so essential to a wine’s grace and longevity. Fermentations are non-inoculated, MLs are completed with proprietary bacteria and the aging is done primarily in French oak. All the best claimed for terroir or a sense of place is found in Antaeus.
About the Winery
Storybook Mountain has established a world-wide reputation for the consistently high quality of its wines. The Zinfandel tradition began at Storybook Mountain in the early 1880s when its red clay-loam hillsides in the Mayacamas Range were first planted to this varietal. Here, an ideal match of terroir and grape allows Zinfandel to show its true potential. Legend has it that all Storybook Zinfandels have happy endings.
Storybook Mountain’s sought-after estate wines are carefully hand-crafted from choice grapes grown in the certified organic estate vineyards surrounding the winery. They are aged at least 12 months in the best French, Hungarian and American oak barrels inside century-old caves dug deep into the mineral-rich volcanic rock underlying the hand-tended vineyard.
Winemaker Dr. J. Bernard Seps
Jerry and his wife Sigrid bought 90 acres of land surrounding a ghost winery that had been built in 1883, falling in love with the wild and abandoned landscape. They created their own winery and planted Zinfandel, the ideal match to their vineyard’s terroir. Their wines are famed for intensity and longevity. Raspberries, black cherries and spice are the essence of their complex, well balanced and elegant wines. Their 1984 Reserve became one of the highest rated Zinfandels in history.
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Vineyard Notes
Wine critic Robert Parker has described our Storybook Mountain estate as “One of the steepest, most picturesque vineyards in California.” Located at the top of Napa Valley four miles north of Calistoga and just a quarter-mile from the Sonoma County border, our estate vineyard reaches elevations approaching 2,000 feet on an eastern slope of the Mayacamas Mountain Range, creating an ideal eastern exposure characterizing many of the world’s most acclaimed vineyards.
The vineyard is divided into over 100 separate micro-blocks based on grape variety, sun exposure, rootstock and clone. Open to the morning sun, the vines easily ripen their fruit, yet their oblique angle to the hot afternoon sun tempers the heat spikes and heat accumulation that can bake grapes, leading to overripe flavors. Furthermore, the Russian River to the west funnels cooling afternoon breezes to our vineyard, resulting in temperatures often ten degrees cooler than in the valley below.
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Sustainable Farming Practices
Rainfall patterns in our northernmost section of Napa Valley contribute to our estate vineyard’s singularity. During spring, the area north of Calistoga is among the rainiest in Napa County, often receiving twice as much precipitation as the cool-climate Carneros district in the southern end of the valley.
This amount of moisture – given our vineyard’s relative coolness and clay soils – means that most of our mature vines do not require irrigation, a blessing especially during drought years. Water conservation, however, is just one element of our commitment to sustainable farming. We are a Certified Organic vineyard and thus refrain from the use of insecticides, pesticides and commercial yeasts, instead using environmentally friendly farming techniques reflecting our determination to be responsible stewards of the land.