The wine is the prize jewel of the 2005 harvest. This our best Babylon yet; the clear culmination of our effort and learning in the vineyard. We managed to grow the grapes in 2005 without irrigation, in the midst of a very vigourous cover crop, and the vines responded by thinning their own fruit. We had to witness the terrifying phenomenon of clusters spontaneously shrivelling on the vine, day after day, as we waited for perfect ripeness in the vineyard. Not shrivelling from heat, sun, drought—this would have affected every cluster nearly evenly. Rather, one cluster among four or five or ten would suddenly stop ripening, begin to dimple, then lose all turgor, and within a few days, look like a dessicated corpse. It was not beautiful—except that we knew that every remaining cluster would be stronger, perhaps had been stronger from the beginning—that the vine had chosen for us, and had chosen according to the most exacting, and deeply hidden, criteria.

Babylon is 100% Petite Sirah. It is exceptionally elegant in spite of its size and strength. The tannins, though huge, are rich and fine, and beautifully knit together.

It is in some ways our most friendly and familiar wine, but no less distinct or emblematic of our work.

This wine is the second emblem of the Project. It is a a skin-femented Sauvignon Blanc from Farina, a superb hillside vineyard. It is from a different section of the vineyard than the it sister-wine, LSB, from richer, loamier soil, and from a different, much more honeyed clone of Sauvignon. The grapes came in rich and fat; so fat that I thought that I had to bleed them to make good wine. So I determined to treat them like red grapes and destemmed then into a large fermenter from which I immediately bled off 20% of the juice. They spent the next 3 weeks there; first in a cold-soak and then with once or twice daily pumopovers until the wine reached 4 brix. Then I drained the wine to almost all new oak and allowed the fermentation to finish with complete leisure. The wine went dry in July 2007, and revealed complexity and pleasure beyond what I had ever hope for. The wine is honeyed from the fruit and new oak, but stern, complex, many layered from the skin fermentation and the pips. It is in everything but color a red wine.

Whole cluster pressed Chardonnay from the volcanic, old-vine Chardonnay vineyard of John Guman. We made a tiny amount of wine in 2006, partly because we did a miserable job figuring out how to use a friend's tiny press. But the juice that we got was excellent—less tannic than Guman usually is, softer and more floral. The fermenting wine smelled like Moscato d'Asti. The wine fermented and aged in 30 gallon barrels, 50% new and the rest quite fresh, half the size of our standard barrels, to expose the wine to more air than a standard barrel would. In spite of this exposure, the wine is young and juicy. It has some sherry-like characteristics because of its typical surface yeast, but is much more honeyed and fat than the more saline 2005 Guman Nereides. Bacon fat and dried porcini…

A new Naucratis. This is 100% tank-fermented Verdelho, but no relation to the Verdelhos of the Rueda, this is straight grüner knock-off. The wine is powerful but abrupt. It has a beautiful nose of honeysuckle, peach, and wet stones—but it is neither light not delightful. It is strong and sappy, with a lift of sweet flowers over the gravelly minerality.

As always, the twin of the Naucratis, harvested on the same day from the same vineyard. More than ever, a more intense version of the same wine. In 2007, the Gemella hardly went through malolactic fermentation at all, and so it has all the gravelly minerality of the Naucratis. But it is more intense, especially in all of the realm of salt and mineral. The Naucratis is a playful grüner; the Gemella is a very serious, almost combative one.

Whole cluster pressed Pinot Gris, fermented in neutral oak. From the same vineyard as the San Floriano del Collio. This is a mountain-side vineyard a little higher up Sonoma Mountain than the excellent Farina Sauvignon vineyard. Not as mineral or high acid in character as the Farina SB, but nearly as fine and intense. This wine was allowed to go through malolactic fermentation and so has a very soft, aromatic nose; inviting but not distinct. It smells more of its mineral underpinnings than any fruit or flowers. In the mouth, good tannic structure, excellent acidity in spite of the malo, and the flavor of a nice, fat, fennel-spiced salami.