2015 Heart of the Hill

Tasting through our 2015 Bordeaux style wines, the 2015 Heart of the Hill Cabernet Sauvignon stands out immediately with the deepest, brightest, purple magenta hue in the lineup. The aromas are equally brooding, offering intense cassis and black currant fruit wrapped in an array of spice notes from wood smoke, cocoa nib, espresso bean, anise to the savory notes of hoisin, beef broth, and tea leaf. The palate offers the richest, weightiest mouthful of Cabernet in our cellar. A greater degree of extract demands a longer rest in the cellar, but may ultimately live the longest of any of our wines. 

Unlike Père de Famille Cabernet Sauvignon, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon barrels from across the Columbia Valley,  our Heart of the Hill Cabernet Sauvignon bottling allows us to show off one grape variety from one unique site. We hope you enjoy the contrast as much as we do.

2015 marks our 7th harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from Heart of the Hill Vineyard on Red Mountain. In these few years, we’ve learned much about the impact of vineyard parcel, harvest date, and cellar handling. Over the past two vintages, we’ve assembled this wine exclusively from blocks of this vineyard.

What began with one small block of Clone 8 Cabernet Sauvignon in 2009 (enough to make about 4 barrels) has grown into a master study of this splendid single vineyard from top to bottom. Today we farm and harvest 5 blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon from Heart of the Hill Vineyard. A review of harvest dates over the past several seasons has shined a light on one all-important detail; harvesting at the early side of “flavor ripeness” yields the best result. This may sound like a straight forward task, but one which requires frequent visits to the site during our busiest time of the year. During the peak weeks of harvest, twice-weekly visits are our rule.

While 2014 marked the first vintage of Heart of the Hill Cabernet Sauvignon bottling, it also coincided with the arrival of our first 850-gallon concrete fermentation tanks from France. These unique vessels arrived in our cellar with hopes of enhancing our Syrahs. As the harvest season of 2014 gathered momentum we decided to ferment Cabernet in them as well. What began simply as a means of coping with a fast and furious Cabernet Sauvignon harvest, by season’s end was all we were talking about. The barrels of wine yielded from these tanks became the backbone of this cuvee. Since 2014, we plan carefully for the Heart of the Hill Cabernet Sauvignon harvest, keeping the concrete tanks open in anticipation.