The nose is enveloping with its blueberry and blackberry jam notes, highlighted by touches of violets and wisteria, and a light candied caramel quality. In the mouth, the wine is equally rich and decadent, with the berries riding on a wave of satin. Spicy notes of sandalwood and toffee linger on the rich fruit finish.

Dutton-Goldfield’s mission is to craft world-class wines that express the personalities of their cool-climate home, through a brightness of fruit, complexity, structure and balance. The winery was born of a handshake in a vineyard in 1998, when longtime colleagues and friends Steve Dutton and Dan Goldfield recognized this shared vision.

After hand sorting and destemming each block into small open top fermenters, the must is cold soaked for 5 days in order to gently extract color, spice and fruit characters, while mitigating harsher tannins. Each clone is treated individually: the Pommard/2A block needs the gentlest handling given its highly tannic nature, while the 828 generally likes the longest time in the fermenter to enhance its floral aromatics. The lots are punched down between 1 and 3 times per day depending on the stage of fermentation, and character of the lot. The blend was put together in May of 2015, then sent back to barrel just bottling in August of 2015 to capture the bright, fresh juiciness of this vintage. This year we loved the floral spice of Cadus Allier barrels, and the solid bass notes of Taransaud for our Emerald Ridge. Aged 10 months in French oak (50% new barrels).