Winemaker Notes
The highest quality crop not witnessed in years. I know, I put a lot of eggs in the basket of vintage 2018. However, friends, brace yourself for some delicious, superior quality wines coming from 2021. Across the board—from Chardonnay through to Cabernet Sauvignon— we are looking at magnificent concentrations of color and flavor that forecast a stellar vintage to come.
 
There is something magical that happens to a vineyard when water is scarce. Cluster sets are reduced naturally, grape size shrinks the skin-to-pulp ratio, and energy is driven to protect the crop that is left. We manually thin in all vintages to balance the ratios on the vine; however, it is Mother Nature’s culling that always works wonders for producing wines of profound resilience. The only downside in this natural selection scenario is crop yield. Vintage 2021 will see significant reductions in yield from 30% to 50% less than normal years. For example, our Bone Ash Vineyard Old Vine Block, which produces our vineyard designate Cabernet Sauvignon, yielded 45% less than 2019 (we lost the 2020 vintage of this wine to cinder and smoke, so we have no yield comparison). Where we normally bottle anywhere from 395 to 480 cases of our Bone Ash Cabernet, we can safely say that the production of the 2021 will be cut by more than half.