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A blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre from an Eleven Acre vineyard in Paso Robles, named the Brave Oak Vineyard. We have a long-term lease/contract for these eleven acres of Grenache (4 acres), Syrah (4 acres), and Mourvedre (3 acres). In fact, we had the vineyard custom planted for us back in 2001, with the 2003 being the first significant crop. We carefully selected French clones for the Grenache and Mourvedre that had a track record for smaller crops and turning out wines of high class and distinction. For the Syrah we stayed with what Paso Robles does best and stuck with the Estrella River clone that is the first clone of Syrah to be planted in the Central Coast (the same clone as our Roasted Slope Vineyard Syrah). So, this is my first attempt at a delicious blended red from this vineyard, fashioned in the same way as our Esperance, but with a taste that is uniquely from this vineyard. While our Esperance tends to have tighter flavors and brighter acidity, this wine comes from a much riper location that favors rich flavors and higher alcohols with lower acidity. This makes for a wine that is a real pleasure to drink…even right now. The ELEVEN has a full and round mouthfeel, with flavors and aromas of black cherries, currants, black pepper and a floral note that comes from the wonderfully ripe Mourvedre. On to the obvious, YES, the wine is finished with the sometimes controversial Stelvin closure, and YES, I am still quite serious about bottling more of our wines this way. This is a very isolated test, where we bottled 100% of the wine in the “screwcap” to ensure the freshest, fruitiest, and taint-free wine possible. We took this so seriously that we then aged the wine for ELEVEN months in the bottle prior to release, to make sure that the closures are sound and the wine will still evolve with a screwcap on top. Guess what, the wine has evolved beautifully. It has the most pleasantly soft tannins and ripe flavors that I suggest you taste this bottle right away .

The 2003 Enchanté is the fulfillment of a dream to produce a rich, blended wine that rivals and mimics the great white wines of Hermitage (in the Northern Rhone Valley) while retaining our characteristic "estate style". This vision yields a rich, concentrated wine with aromas and flavors of ripe melon, honeysuckle, apricot, and spices. We think the wine strikes a perfect balance between styles - the fruit-forward California style and the elegant-austere French style. Actually, we'd much rather think the wine is just plain delicious, no matter how you choose to describe it.

"The grapes for this wine come from the cool coastal foothills of the Bien Nacido Vineyard, from a gently sloping vineyard block. Yields were maintained quite low (around 1.5 tons per acre) to help promote increased ripeness of tannins and intensity of the wine’s character. The wine is remarkably dark for Pinot Noir, which immediately tempts you in to take a whiff. In the nose you will find raspberries, chocolate, and a wonderful earthy/spiciness that rounds out with a hint of balanced toasty-oak quality from the 20 months spent in great French Oak Barrels. In the mouth you will taste what the color and nose hinted at…a wonderfully rich, layered and complex wine. The wine retains a certain level of “freshness” from the natural acidity of the wine, which helps to prevent the wine from ever appearing “heavy”. All in all a balanced and ageworthy Pinot Noir." - Andrew Murray, Winemaker

"Fruit forward and complex nose mostly of raspberries, black cherry, and a jaminess that hints at the ripeness of this wine. Very full bodied, yet remarkably balanced at the same time. The wine would be perfect to enjoy in its youth, but able to age for 2-5 years. There is plenty of spiciness to balance the fruitiness in this wine. The spice notes are mostly comprised of freshly crushed white pepper, and a vanilla note from the indulgent oak ageing. The wine was aged for 20 months in barrel prior to bottling, yielding a soft and lush wine that would be at home on the dinner table or simply by itself with great friend." - Andrew Murray, Winemaker

"This is a wine that truly expresses the unique terroir of Oak Savanna rather than the simply tasting like the barrel producer’s ego. The wine is full of pear, green apple, and a hint of citrus and mineral notes with a richness that is balanced by the natural acidity resulting from the cool growing conditions. Malolactic was encouraged on only a portion of the wine, which gives the wine a creamy and rich and yeasty mouthfeel without the overtly “buttery” aromas of most Chardonnays. The wine is thus a perfect blend of new world winemaking, giving the lushness and fruit, and old world winemaking, yielding pedigree and refinement. As hinted at above, we chose to use a mix of new and once and twice filled French Oak barrels to allow the greatness of the vineyard shine through rather than simply letting the wine hide behind such an oaky fortress as is typical with Chardonnay." - Andrew Murray, Winemaker

This is a "heavier" white, which makes it great for the fall and winter months, or as a summer aperitif. The oak helps this wine stand up to richer fish dishes, as long as one uses a light hand with the lemon garni!

This wine is a blend of 8 distinct hillside vineyards, which are planted to three different clones of Syrah. With this bottling, we strive for a balance between power and elegance. To that end, we employed a mix of French and Australian winemaking regimes, that we feel best express the terroir of our unique location. The wine is dark garnet in color with an explosive nose of black cherry, plum, raspberry, and wonderful spices, including black pepper and cinnamon. This 100% Estate-Grown Syrah was lovingly open-top fermented with frequent punch downs and aged in a mix of new and 1-3 year. old French oak barriques for 18 months, which results in a wine with subtle oak integration and a very refined mouthfeel. You can drink this wine tonight, or watch it improve in the bottle over the next 2-5 years.

This vintage of the 2003 Syrah Hillside Reserve comes from a singular vineyard of Block 18 (also known as the Reserve Block). The vineyard is planted to 100% Syrah of the Durrell clone, made famous up in Sonoma County. Very little of it is planted in the Central Coast, and we are certainly proud to have our 6 acres of it. This is the second vineyard that we planted on our estate, back in 1990. So the vines are an average of 12 years old for this release. It is characterized by a gentle to not-so gentle north-facing slope. At the peak, the vineyard is over 1500 feet in elevation, which makes it one of the highest vineyards around. The 360 degree views from the top are amazing. The vineyard is characterized by a moderate microclimate, with very shallow and rocky soils. All of this combines to make a stunning vineyard with super-low yields (averaging about 1.5 tons per acre) of amazingly concentrated fruit. This is a winegrowers dream vineyard, requiring very little input. It just seems to be the right variety and clone and rootstock in the right place. A wine-geek would say this wine expresses great terroir. I would say it just plain tastes good. We craft the Reserve to age for years to come, while having enough balance to enjoy right away. We will let you decide how to enjoy it.

The Syrah for this wine came from Paso Robles and our Estate vineyard. This is our 6th vintage of this wine and I am so excited about it that I named it “Tous les Jours” (or “Everyday” to us Americans) to signify its immense drinkability. We feel the wine makes an ideal “House Wine”; the wine you open just for the heck of it, or just to pour a single glass, the rest to be enjoyed later. And at this price, why not? Once we had the grapes, we gave them the same attention to detail as the rest of our estate wines. We used open-top fermentation in small bins, with frequent punch downs for extraction and color. We then aged the various wines for 11 months in a mix of new and 1-3 year old French oak barriques. It is highly drinkable right now, however, it will reward the patient with another couple years of aging. The 2002 Vintage was awarded "Smart Buy" with 89 Points from the Wine Spectator, beating out many imports that cost much, much more!!! We could not be more pleased with this little gem.

The Syrah for this wine came from Paso Robles and our Estate vineyard. This is our 7th vintage of this wine and I am so excited about it that I named it “Tous les Jours” (or “Everyday” to us Americans) to signify its immense drinkability. We feel the wine makes an ideal “House Wine”; the wine you open just for the heck of it, or just to pour a single glass, the rest to be enjoyed later. And at this price, why not? Once we had the grapes, we gave them the same attention to detail as the rest of our estate wines. We used open-top fermentation in small bins, with frequent punch downs for extraction and color. We then aged the various wines for 11 months in a mix of new and 1-3 year old French oak barriques. It is highly drinkable right now, however, it will reward the patient with another couple years of aging.

This is the third year wine in a 3 year contract with Bien Nacido Vineyard in Santa Maria. So, this is my swan-song wine for this vineyard (for now). This wine comes from the famed ZB block up on a hillside, where there is a bit of Viognier growing at the end of the rows. The vineyard itself is a bit of enigma to me in that there are amazingly great sections and truly ordinary sections, and farming practices everywhere in between. It turns out that Terroir does matter and it is, therefore, hard to grow poor quality grapes in that vineyard. We further lucked out on our trio of vintages (2002, 2003, and 2004) with the grapes always arriving at the winery well before November. In cool years (like the 1998-2000) these same sections struggled to get ripe and were picked by many in late November after rains and all sorts of maddening weather. I loved the 2003 the, but the 2004 may prove to be the best of the 3 years. Production was very low in 2004, so we were only able to bottle just over 100 cases of this wine. The wine is very dark, perhaps even darker than the Thompson Syrah, but the aromas are brighter and more accessible right now. The wine has a similar “cherry” profile to the Thompson with a dusting of white pepper and even the subtlest hint of the elusive candied-violets. The French oak ageing imparts smoky/spicy/vanilla notes with a tad bit of crispy bacon, that I generically call the “breakfast meats” flavors. I love the texture of this wine, with very ripe, round, and fine tannins, that are very typical of the Bien Nacido Vineyard. While this wine is big, the fine tannins give it the impression of drinkablity. So, drink this before the Thompson, but I would still hold onto this for 3-5 months. It should improve for a minimum of 3-5 more years.

Another over-the-top delight from our two different clones of Viognier growing in 5 different estate vineyard blocks. Exotic and forward in the nose; this wine offers rich and intense aromas of flowers, honey-suckle, grapefruit, pineapple, and dried-apricots that follows through on the palate with an incredibly luxurious mouthfeel. We purposefully fermented the Viognier in a in stainless steel at cool temperatures to preserve the more subtle and ephemeral aromas of this wine. It is very crisp and fresh tasting now but will continue to evolve over the coming year. This wine is bottled in the Stelvin (screwcap) closure to help retain its freshness.