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For much of his five-decade wine career Jed Steele has been famed for his way with Chardonnay, and Santa Barbara County's Bien Nacido Vineyard gives him the perfect fruit to show what he can do with the grape. The 2000 vintage has yielded a beautifully balanced wine - not too oaky, not too full, with lots of tropical fruit flavors and the right acidity to keep its rich character fresh and lively.

Our typical winemaking style for red wines is a warm fermentation followed by pressing and racking. The wine then goes to Oak barrels and generally spends 18-20 months in a combination of American and French oak barrels. While most people are not familiar with this variety, once we get them to taste the wine they are converts for life. This wine is a mouthful of pleasure: lots of fruit, medium tannins and a long lingering finish. We would recommend some cellar time for this wine if only to allow all of the great aromas and flavors properly meld.

Our style for Steele Carneros Pinot Noir has always been one of moderate oak, juicy, high-tone fruit flavors and aromas of black cherry, with a rich nose, juicy palate and long finish. After fermentation the wine was aged for nine months in a combination of French, Oregon and Hungarian oak barrels. Because of the popularity of this wine, we bottle it in both 750 and 375 ml bottles.

Our flagship white wine, Steele Cuvee, is an example of the art of blending. The process begins with our grape sources. We have worked with most of the great Chardonnay vineyards in California and have chosen these prestigious properties to obtain the grapes for our Steele Cuvee Chardonnay.

While we are not known as a Bordeaux/Cabernet kind of winery (we tend to make more Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel) our location in Lake County allows us to produce several of these varieties in styles which would make our neighbors to the south a bit jealous. One of these is Merlot. When we started buying grapes from the vineyard of Floyd Silva we found that he was growing some of the best Merlot that we had ever tasted. His vineyard is on a gravelly bench, which overlooks the Big Valley area of Lake County. The vines grow well but not too well and have a great balance of flavors, structure and tannins.

We started making Pinot Blanc so that we would have another white wine besides Chardonnay to have at winmaker dinners. In fact, we often called Pinot Blanc our “baby Chardonnay” This grape is the colorless expression of the red Pinot Noir grape. The Pinot family have very unstable genetics and the result are the many clones of Pinot Noir, the dusky colored white grape called Pinot Gris and this grape the Pinot Blanc.

With Pinot Noir we take a minimal approach to wine making. Fermentations are carried out with as little manipulation as possible. We use a gentle crusher, one short pump-over per day and cool soak the grapes prior to the onset of fermentation. The wine is always elegant, perfumed and alluring. The wine from Bien Nacido is deeper, richer with more color and body than from other vineyards. Our aging program is always in French Oak barrels which are heavily toasted during the bending of the staves. This toasting gives a smoky aromatic backdrop to the wonderful cherry fruit aromas and flavors. We usually bottle the wine in December of the following year, so at a minimum the wine spends 12 months in French Oak.

With Pinot Noir we take a minimal approach to wine making. Fermentations are carried out with as little manipulation as possible. We use a gentle crusher, one short pump-over per day and cool soak the grapes prior to the onset of fermentation. Our aging program is always in French Oak barrels which are heavily toasted during the bending of the staves. This toasting gives a smoky aromatic backdrop to the wonderful cherry fruit aromas and flavors. We usually bottle the wine in December of the following year, so at a minimum the wine spends 12 months in French Oak barrels.

We are always interested in seeing what other growers would do with Pinot Noir. Louie Lucas grows Chardonnay for us and had planted a small acreage of Pinot Noir. This vintage is the first fruit from this vineyard. It is interesting that Bien Nacido just across the Sisquoc River produces deeply colored very concentrated wines and this vineyard tends toward lighter wines with finesse and elegance

The nose on the Parmelee-Hill Pinot Noir is rich with butter, strawberries ripe on the vine, and just a hint of earth. This wine fills the entire palate with velvety soft tannins, sweet berries, and just a touch of cranberry. The finish is of medium length and very satisfying. We highly recommend this wine with turkey dinner, grilled salmon, and milder cheeses. An excellent choice with any Holiday meal whether you prefer turkey and trimmings, ham, or goose. I particularly enjoyed this wine recently with a braised lamb shank and some garlic mashers.

We have worked with the Pinot Noir from Sangiacomo since our first vintage in 1991. Each year we choose the best lots and produce a single vineyard bottling. We age these lots for an additional 4-5 months and use a higher proportion of new French oak barrels. These barrels are heavily toasted during the bending of the staves. This toasting gives a smoky aromatic backdrop to the wonderful cherry fruit aromas and flavors. This is a beautiful expression of Pinot Noir: medium color and the pronounced aroma of “Bing” cherries, combined with a smooth structure and perfect balance.properly meld.

After many years of close observation we decided to plant Syrah in Lake County. This decision has been affirmed as each vintage has rewarded us with great fruit. Five growers made the initial plantings, and of these, two have stood out as superior vineyard sites. Floyd and Jolene Silva farm the benches to the west on the Big Valley between Kelseyville and Lakeport. Don and Betty Fiora have a picture postcard vineyard well to the southeast of Clear Lake. Both of these vineyards produce wines of intense color, flavor and structure. We find the friendly competition between growers for the best wine of the vintage to be a healthy thing.

As with all our grapes, Parmelee-Hill Syrah is hand picked. After crushing, we kept the wine on the skins, while doing pump-overs twice daily, for two weeks. We racked the wine to French oak barrels for 18 months of aging before bottling. The wine received another year of bottle aging prior to release. This wine, with its rich flavors and firm tannins will cellar well for 8-10 years.

As is our custom with most white wine varieties, we barrel fermented the juice in small French Oak barrels. We must pay close attention to this wine. The caretaker for the last four vintages has been Emily Goldhahn. She watches over the barrels and stirs them weekly. She also evaluates each one for aroma, flavor and color. The wine was lightly filtered and bottled in March of 2002 to preserve the great Viognier perfume.

Aromas of brown sugar and toasty oak begin this wonderful wine experience. The small, concentrated berries from this century-old vineyard offer just that, concentrated flavors. Lake County Dust gives this wine a chalky, dusty mouth feel amid wonderful ripe blackberry and raspberry that cut through to a complex edge of minerally tannins. Tones of cedar give away to spice with good depth and a long, lingering finish. This wine has elegance and finesse.

Even in a good year, picking the DuPratt Vineyard is never easy. A mountain vineyard with hilly terrain gives some vines more sun. By its nature Zinfandel ripens unevenly and each cluster has raisins, ripe berries and under-ripe berries. Choosing when to harvest takes skill, intuition and sometimes, good luck. Our answer to this is a test pick in which we harvest two rows, which run the length of the vineyard. If we get what we feel are adequate sugars after a day of soaking on the skins, we then harvest the remainder of the vineyard. Even so we keep the upper (riper) part of this vineyard separate from the lower portion.

This wine is known for its earthy, brambly and mildly tarry character. This vintage is no exception. The nose has the previously mentioned characteristics in addition to a bacon (or pancetta) and a white pepper element. The palate is effusive with berries, sour cherries, butter, and chocolate tannins. The wine has great structure, is well balanced, and has a nice finish. We enjoy this wine with roasted meats (particularly if accompanied by a rich red fruit reduction), a flavorful Ratatouille, rib steak fresh from the broiler, and a variety of cheeses.