100% Syrah, fermented whole cluster in wooden puncheons with slight foot treading and then daily light punchdowns for about 3 weeks; aged in neutral wood for 23 months.

A dark and slightly savage wine— savage, but not heavy or over-bearing. The wine is marked by the typical black olives and Mediterranean herbs of the vineyard, but is perhaps lighter and more graceful than previous vintages. We ascribe this to more gentle extraction during fermentation, more patience, and less desire to beat the wine up. This wine is slightly backward and needs a couple of years to open up; it should then develop and hold for another decade.

This, our most intense wine, is a perfect expression of its vineyard site: a very steep hillside of light, well-drained, marine soil, facing northeast on the edge of Grizzly Bay in the San Joaquin Delta. The steep hillside is planted to Merlot, which struggles terribly and produces tiny, scant clusters, with berries the size of peppercorns. Some of the Sangiovese is on the top of the hill, some is on a south-facing hillside. It all grows in much more luxurious conditions than the Merlot, and offers an absolutely necessary balance to the Merlot. The wine is dark and briary, with intense tannin and acidity. You could not call the wine “closed;” it is very expressive: but it is incredibly young. It will only begin to open in the next 5 years and will develop for two more decades.

I quote notes from the 2012 release of this wines:

The wine is still rich and powerful, and has proved worthy of aging—but it is not beautiful. It is a bit of a brute. More Caliban than Phaedrus.

Olive Oil made 100% from olives grown by the Tenbrinks adjacent to the winery; from the 20 different varieties of trees that they planted in 2006. Milled for us at the amazing, and nearby Il Fiorello, and bottled with minimal settling to emphasize freshness and vivacity.