Our first ever Russian River Valley Zinfandel is a new ‘one-timer’ bottling for us as we were able to secure some amazing fruit from the Landy Vineyard. This vineyard, while in the Russian River Valley AVA, is much cooler than our Calistoga Zinfandels and offers a nice contrast in styles. The Landy Vineyard sits at 1000-foot elevation in the Sweetwater Springs District of the Russian River Valley. This gorgeous vineyard sits atop a knoll above the fog line giving it longer sun exposure than most of the Russian River Valley. The cool summer weather patterns of fog helped keep that vibrant acidity that always is a hallmark for Russian River Valley zins.

Powerful and appealingly rustic, this wine offers up briary raspberry aromas, mature plum, stewed tomato, cigar box and oak aromas. This unique wine has an old world charm with dried fruit and spice flavors with dried sage as an added complexity. In your mouth the flavor of berry fruits and spice keep lingering on and on in the finish. Concentrated and complex, this wine will drink very well now and mature nicely well into the future. A perfect pair with thin-crust pizza topped with basil and fennel sausage.

The grapes were harvested in the early morning hours on September 29 and were sorted and destemmed into open top fermenters. After a 2 day cold soak they fermented in tank and were transferred into 2 new hybrid French-american oak barrles and 3 two year old American oak barrels. The wine was aged for 16 months and then bottled.