Welcome to the Wine Spies Intrigue Awards for 2016! Each year we recognize our most popular and most sought-after wines from the previous year - while giving our Operatives one final chance to secure some of the winning wines for themselves.

We may never show this wine again, so grab yours while you still can.

Speedy Creek Winery is our Wine Intrigue Awards winner for 2016 Winery of the Year, just as it was our winner for 2015 Winery of the Year during last year’s annual Wine Spies Intrigue Awards event.

Today, we’re thrilled to bring back a Speedy Creek favorite, their stunning Speedy Creek 2011 Sonoma Tuscan Blend. The winery, running low on this wine, raised their asking price from $30/bottle to $36/bottle - but we’ve lowered our price to almost half of that.

Today’s Speedy Creek 2011 Sonoma Tuscan Blend, is a masterful blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese and Petit Verdot. This wine is deeply aromatic and bursting with flavor. You’ll be bowled over by the elegance and the Tuscany-perfect aromas and flavors that the wine exudes.

The vineyard where today’s wine was born is a historic one, planted in the early 1980’s by Robert Mondavi himself. Mondavi recognized the Knights Valley vineyard location as being the perfect place to plant select red wine grape varietals. Ultra-luxury (and ultra-expensive) Peter Michael and Verite wineries followed Robert Mondavi’s lead and established their wineries here, too.

The remote, mountainous Knights Valley AVA is home to fewer than 10 wineries and these two, along with Speedy Creek, are the most recognizable.

This wine is deeply aromatic, with fruit, earth and spice that leap from the glass. Aromas of black cherry, raspberry, blackberry, stewed plum and red currant meld with cigar box, spice box, sweet tobacco leaf, spiced cherry candy, dusty earth and a hint of white pepper.

Flavors cascade across the palate, with perfect flavors of blackberry, blueberry compote, Alpine strawberry, sweet tobacco, smoked cherry, dusty bramble, brown spice, black pepper and baker’s chocolate.

Please enjoy this wine with our very heartiest recommendation.