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As we try to do with all of our wines we put our heart and soul into this wine. All the grapes come from the Ciel du Cheval vineyard on Red Mountain where Jim Holmes and Ryan Anderson continue to grow excellent fruit. The extra year in barrel we gave this wine, has contributed to making it a wine with a sense of completeness and, we hope, sophistication.

This vineyard increasingly seems to us one that possesses many of the virtues of the best Right Bank wines in their best years. We feel Merlot and Cabernet Franc grow as well on this site as anywhere in the country. We admire the job that Jim Holmes and Ryan Johnson are doing on this great swatch of land. The ‘03 is, as most of our wines are when they’re young, fruit driven but with ripe tannin and acid to keep it honed. Red fruit flavors dominate this year’s wine. The wines should be simply beautiful in four years or so. We have been trying the 98’s recently and love the way they have developed. The 03’s will travel the same path.

Once again this vineyard shows the sheer power and depth of fruit it has become famous for. The mineral limestone flavor that completes the profile of this wine is apparent as an interesting accent. This wine more than the others, perhaps because it has no Cabernet Franc, would benefit from sitting for a few extra years. As always, we suggest you try the wine and make up you own mind about it.

This medium bodied Merlot blend offers a full spectrum of berry and floral scents followed by a rich and structured mouthful of blackberries, plums and herbs. It is made up of fruit from the Ciel du Cheval, Champoux, Klipsun and Sheridan vineyards.

Sangiovese is a medium bodied wine with deep color and fruit flavors heightened by herbal accents. Our wine fits this description. The grapes are from Ciel du Cheval vineyard. The wine is made with almost no noxious oak flavors to hinder the delicate aspects of sangiovese. This is a wine, which is bold and at the same time suave. The 2004 vintage is coming into focus as a vintage of balance and bearing.

The soft full mid palate dominates this wine. This vintage is 50% Cabernet Sauvignon with the rest Merlot and Cabernet Franc. This is the third vintage for the Sheridan vineyard and by far its best effort. It took a few years after the 2001 hail and wind storm for the vines to get back to a healthy state; that they have done. The wine finishes with subtle appealing tannins. The fine job Chris Hoon and Scott Greer are doing in this vineyard is apparent in the wine.

We have struggled verbally and enologically to define our wines and those around us. We have argued for balance in the bottle and exacting viticulture in the vineyard to yield even ripeness. Yet wines, which move to the center of the international style, continue to be the light in the eyes of some. So, what has this to with Sorella? We think our wine is the obverse of the preceding description or at least we have consciously tried to make it so. We seek lithe lively fruit profiles and suave tannins coupled together to form a wine, which is at the same time memorable and able to be identified as a Washington wine. We are trying to offer purity and balance in this wine. We are working hard and we hope that you find something memorable.

We are working hard on our vineyard and even though this fruit is in the very young category, for us it carries enough complexity and weight to merit being bottled as an AW wine. The site is very frugal in terms of nutrients for the vines so we are building up the soil as we try to learn the ins and outs of this 36-acre vineyard. We are seeing differences. We are noting them and we are imagining strategies for dealing with the different parts of the vineyard. The wine has a luscious and simply delicious appeal. We like the softness of it as well as the currant and plum flavors.