2015 "Night Owl" Red Blend Reserve

Cabernet Sauvignon carries complexity & weight and delivers dark fruit, dark spice, and a rich mouthfeel, incredibly complex and pleasing. This variety is called the King of wines for a reason. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most popular grape in the US for a reason: it is incredibly complex and flavorful. Malbec & Merlot add beautiful dark and bright fruit flavors, and Petite Sirah packs a deep color and ripe fruit flavors as well as ample spice. The grapes for this blend are cold soaked and fermented with whole berries at cold temperatures, to achieve a partial carbonic maceration and maximize fruit-forward aromatic expression. These techniques result in a vibrant fruit profile and lighter tannins. After fermentation, the wines are left on the skins for an extended maceration to ensure full extraction of flavor and soft tannins from the skins before pressing and being transferred to oak on 100% full lees. This mix of techniques allows the maximum expression of fruit, spice, and lees aromas to produce an intense wine displaying the best qualities of these grapes and vineyards. This wine was aged in oak barrels, 50% new, a mixture of French and American oak, for 20 months, to balance and elevate the wines. The wine was aged on the yeast lees and stirred (batonage) monthly to extract a rich mouthfeel. At this point, the wine was racked back down to new oak barrels once more and aged for an additional 12 months, adding tertiary notes of earth, forest, leather & tobacco.