We thought it was only right to craft a wine that tells the story of John Williams and Jim Holmes. Estate Red Mountain Pioneer Red will be released in our November 2016 wine club release. Shortly thereafter it will be a tasting room staple, where it will be featured as the first red wine in our lineup. We blended the wine with three goals in mind, in no particular order:Dark color
Fruit-forward Approachable structure In other words, an ideal wine to start a tasting with. From the beginning we knew we wanted to blend the wine vertically, which is why you’ll notice there is no vintage on the label. Some of the more intriguing wines we have released over the last few years have been vertical blends, and we wanted to explore that further. Instead of a vintage, these wines will carry version numbers. This is Version I. Estate Red Mountain Pioneer Red contains components from 2014 (70%), 2013 (28%), and 2012 (2%). Most wines in the world are blended horizontally, which is to say the components all come from the same vintage. This is, in my opinion, principally done because of tradition and historical precedent. But beyond that, blending within a vintage is largely an artificial constraint. I would go so far as to say that when you are emphasizing PLACE, which is what we are doing here, vertical blending allows you to blend a wine that tells a more complete story. As far as grapes are concerned, there are six. All five Bordeaux varietals make the cut, as well as a 2% splash of Grenache. The wine is delicious, and we are very excited to make it available to you in the near future. We’re only going to charge $23 for it. And why not? When you’re the Pioneer, you don’t have to answer to anyone.
Note: I will update this post when the wine is available. For now, it's still unreleased.
