100% Cinsault from an own-rooted vineyard planted in Lodi in 1870.

Explosive and subtle at once—just in different ways. We harvested this fruit early, in advance of a sudden heatwave. We worried that it was perhaps too early, that the wine would be thin, or even worse, green.

But 12 months' maturation has revealed it as a total triumph. We are so delighted. The wine is perhaps lighter in body than any previous vintage, but the flavors are fully developed and etched, arranged, juxtaposed with the highest degree of precision and complexity. The wine is beautifully perfumed, without a trace of green.

A superb example of the Prince! We returned to the way that we made the wine in 2013: only in puncheons, 100% whole cluster. But we made two new variations: we used the Courier protocol on 100% of the puncheons with total success, and, for only the second time, we diverted some fruit from the upper section of the vineyard—fruit that would normally go into LSB. We find the demand for the Prince insatiable, and we wanted to see, once again, what would be the effect of turning some of the LSB fruit into the Prince. The result is higher, sharper acidity; more precision, less luxurious breadth. We are very happy—but the pain of making less LSB is too great, and we we will not repeat this move, in spite of the effect on commerce.

100% whole-cluster pressed Chardonnay, planted in the driest dust in Coombsville in 1982 from a selection massale of a dozen vineyards.

One hesitates to say too much: The wine is a kind of ideal. he growing season could hardly have been better: the fruit at harvest was perfectly ripe, perfectly sound, and very intense. The resulting wine is full and round but very disciplined. It is marked by its length and complexity, and less by fruit and more by secondary and tertiary flavors echoing throughout the wine. We are so delighted by this.

A superb and strange deep, dark, sharply etched red wine; made from a cofermentation of hillside Merlot and Sangiovese. The fruit in 2014 was exceptional in every way but plenitude. The berries were tiny and explosively intense. They were high in acid and very tannic. And when we brought the fruit in, we found that we had more stems by weight than berries. This did not slow us down at all: we were determined to preserve and present the nature of the vineyard in this vintage, and so we fermented everything together and without destemming, as we always had done.

The result is a wine that bears more resemblance to black tea than to any fruit beverage. The wine is highly tannic but not in a blocky way—in a way reminiscent of grand neo-classical architecture. A Viennese palace among wines.

We are so excited about this wine. It is our favorite wine in the cellar right now; the one that we are sure to show any guest. There was something about the 2015 vintage that made the wine completely transparent. It is powerful and celestially light at the same time. Truly wonderful and amazing. 100% Chardonnay from Steven Matthiasson's fiercely rocky Michael Mara Vineyard.

I wince: I feel so tiresome and disingenuous when I think ahead to the words that I must say. But this is FAR AND AWAY the best vintage of Gardens ever. It is so good that the wine has always had another name in the cellar, and we thought long and hard about whether to call it sometihng else—just to distinguish it for its excellence! But we opted in the end for simplicity and consistency, and thus, Gardens!

It is a pure cofermentation of Petite Sirah and Cabernet farmed by Steve Tenbrink, and Syrah farmed by Lee Hudson. No post-fermentation blending. The wine is about 40% each PS and Cab, and 20% Syrah. And because of the cofermentation, it has been together its whole life. And the fruit could not have been better in 2014: so deep and complex. The wine reminds us of the Northern Rhone. We are happy and proud.

So good—no doubt our best vintage. A wine of great density and power, but very good acidity. Whole cluster pressed from 100% Verdelho, from a glacial hillside on the perimeter of Lodi.

This is our sister wine to Il Cilieggio—this is the red wine we made from the Stampede vineyard's old-vine, own-rooted Zinfandel. The wine is a beautiful representation of classic, even old-fashioned Zin; a wine that clearly points back to the 70s, an era when Zinfandel was not yet a style and more simply a vector for old California vineyards.

Finally, a triumphant wine from Tegan's old-vine, own-rooted fruit. In our first two vintages, we never achieved excellent; some of this was the struggling of the vineyard, some was difficuties during fermentation. In 2015, the vineyard was beautifully clean and strong, and the fermentations were regular and without a moment's difficulty. The wine has matured beautifully into medium-bodied and rather herbal old-fashioned Zinfandel. The wine has the odd, nearly sweet-pickle character that makes the grape, at moderate ripeness, so distinctive and captivating. We feel that we caught the historical quality of the vineyard.

Superb! Smoky, with a really high degree of minerality. Gewurtztraminer, and so atypical.

This is our last vintage of this wine, and it is a pity! But we have had to apply the knife somewhere, and we have decided that this vineyard must go—in spite of its obvious nobility.

This is a superb vintage of this wine: dark, powerful, complex. 100% syrah, ad 100% whole cluster—but somehow not reminiscent of many other syrahs, especially from California. The wine is too tannic, too structured; and not the least fruity. It is redolent of olives and dark truffles, dried meat, leather. We love it and are so happy to completing this collaboration with such an excellent wine. We made one puncheon; 24 cases.

2013 FARINA VINEYARD CENA EXTREMA

This is not the final name of this wine. I am working on an appropriate classical reference, perhaps from Dante's Inferno.

This is Sauvignon Blanc from Farina, harvested late in 2013 with a potential alcohol of a little more than 17%. We took a tiny bit of the wine--15 gallons—and allowed it to ferment till it stopped: at about 16%, with 10 grams per liter of residual sugar. The wine is viscous and dense, and barely sweet. It is so odd. Not quilte like a dessert wine but not at all like a normal Sauvignon table wine.

It is extreme and intense and supremely delicious. It is a tour-de-force of complexity and interest. In its sweetness, it goes nowhwere near cloying. It can transfix you.