A new Naucratis. This is 100% tank-fermented verdelho, but no relation to the verdelhos of the Rueda. It is the thick-skinned white grape of Madeira. We harvested the fruit rather late, perahps too late, with too much sugar. It is rather unlike the 2006 because of this: high in alcohol, with a little residual sugar, but good acidity and minerality. The wine is powerful but abrupt. It has seductive aromas 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 mait has all the gravelly minerality 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.

This is the star wine of the 2007 vintage. It is gewurztraminer, from rows adjacent to the verdelho at Lost Slough. I purchased 500 lbs to add to the verdelho, but when the fruit was delivered, it was so powerful that I hesitated to combine it with the Naucratis verdelho, and instead pressed it after the verdelho, and on top of the verdelho skins. I collected the juice in a large beer keg and fermented it there, adding rather high amounts of SO2 to prevent malolactic fermentation and diminish the effects of oxygen.

It is completely dry, very intense, and difficult to recognize as gewurz. What is perhaps most fascinating about it is that the wine has the oiliness—not just viscosity, but the oleaginous slickness in the mouth—of Alsatian gewurz, but is much more dry and much less floral. The fruit was very delicious but it is possible that it is just toolassical aromatics of roduced a wine that is embodies, defines, and is defined by the specificity of this vineyard—rather by a set of rather wide-ranging expectations.

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 ing but not distinct. nnings 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.

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. ure, the wine is young and juicy. It 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 …

My second wine from this old-vine Cabernet vineyard, dry-farmed for thirty years on the west side of Spring Mountain. This is the last wine that will made from the orginal old vines; the final survivors of the original vines were pulled out after this harvest.

This is the wine from the very best section of the vineyard, the driest and harshest. It was fermented for more than 60 days in a new oak puncheon and aged for 16 months in a new oak barrel. The wine is spicy to the highest degree and shows the strict, almost severe tannins of its dry-farmed mountain vineyard. It is almost forbiddingly serious; not charming or opulent. It preserves the harshness of its vineyard and its wind-blasted harvest.