2023 Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot

This is somewhat outside our usual wheelhouse. Primarily because the only Merlot we have ever had “a crush on”, from a ripeness perspective in our rarified locality, can best be described as just half a hilltop block. How our winemaker (5’8”) strong-armed the grower (6’6”) to only pick what we call “Diagon Alley” (diagonally) across the block, I will never know! This strip aligns with a band of calcareous bedrock and provides a distinctive fruit quality that is ripe, bright, elegant, and the perfect balancing match to our historic old vine crooner of a Cabernet vineyard. Needless to say, the grower has resisted in subsequent years. Perhaps I need to play cupid and smack him over the head with a bottle (rhetorically speaking, btw) so he truly understands such matchmaking.