100% juice-fermented Verdelho from Lost Slough in the Delta.

This is a very special wine. We harvested a lot of Verdelho in 2015 from Lost Slough. And then the next year, we lost the vineyard to a behemoth. We do not know when we will get it back. We harvested some of the fruit about 5 days earlier than usual for Blowout, for more lightness and higher acidity. We harvested the rest at full ripeness, but not high sugar, and made Naucratis in the normal way—fermented and aged in a single stainless steel tank. At bottling, we knew that the wine was so good that we segregated a barrel from the tank and let it age for another 17 months. We tasted the wine at the beginning of August and found that it showed everything that is excellent (and truly unexpected) in our wines from Lost Slough: it is powerful, dense, and serious. It has good acidity and pronounced minerality. It tastes just as it should—like an older bottle of Naucratis, but with complete freshness and only increased seriousness, not decrepitude. Since the Tour of the Northern Lands, I have been thinking about Beowulf a lot; this wine is named for the Anglo-Saxon kenning for "battle."

100% Sauvignon Blanc from Farina on Sonoma Mountain.

We need to figure out how to celebrate this wine more! The wine has the capacity to be immediately stunning and long-lived in every single vintage. In 2015, the wine took more than a year to ferment again. It was only 3 weeks before the scheduled bottling that we decided to include it. Even on July 1, it was still too far from finished to bottle! But then somehow, magically and invisibly, the wine finished fermentation and became clear in the month that we left it alone.

For the first time ever, we began to involve skin-maceration in the making of this wine. This year, we foot-treaded the fruit on harvest day and let it macerate in the cool for 48 hours before fermentation started, and then pressed it quickly and gently. No sensible tannin passed into the juice; in fact, even we cannot trace the effect of the skins. The wine is deep and long, with a kind of smoky minerality. We think that it will age superbly.

100% whole-cluster fermented Cinsault from Bechtold in Lodi

Superb! The acme of this wine. Very much like the 2016 Prince, we feel that we have never experienced a similar conjunction of absolute grace and power in this wine. Like the Prince, it is lighter in color than usual. But it is also lighter in body—the wine is weightless and has the light agility of ballet dancer. Yet it is utterly complex and long. It is a perfect example of how lightness in a red wine is not necessarily at the expense of power or depth—and, even more important to us—how power need not interfere with transparency and grace. !00% Cinsault from vines planted on their own roots 140 years ago; 100% whole-cluster; fermented in puncheon with the Courier protocol of undisturbed floating cap, for nearly 4 weeks. Then aged without interference or intervention for 12 months in neutral oak. In spite of its lightness, the wine will age well and long. Think not Lodi, but Volnay.

Intensely green, fragrant of Summer plains, very fresh and high acid.

The harvest was late and very, very, good. Somehow, the oil is more fresh and even more intense than in in previous years, in spite of its lateness. We are convinced that Olio Nuovo is the best way to offer it-- though I am still serving oils from 2015 and 2016. They are strong, green, and excellent—but without the amazing exuberance of the fresh oil.