SPRING 2024 RELEASE:
2022 TOMBOY
Varietal: Viognier
AVA: Santa Barbara County
Aging: 100% New French Oak for 10 months
305 cases made
TASTING NOTES: The whitewater rafting instructor might not know your name, but you’re about to change all that on this class V rager. She’s helming the front of the raft like an old pro, maneuvering deftly between lemon butter currents and ripping mandarin orange rapids. In and out of daffodil and baking spice eddies. Cartwheeling slate and mineral outcroppings. Gold Rush apple gradients, mango mai tai tail waves, and the sudden electric boldness to give her your number—if only you weren’t underwater.
DRINK NOW: Pop & Pour CELLAR: Now through 5 years
2021 ON THE ROAD
Varietal: Grenache
AVA: California
Aging: 80% New French Oak for 30 months
367 cases made
TASTING NOTES: A fever dream of watching John Wick and Willy Wonka in the most unlikely of buddy cop comedies. Charred plum pistol kickback meets cherry Fun Dip. Worn leather jackets drive while strawberry gumdrops ride shotgun. Star anise attitude and Swedish fish wisecracks play bad cop-good cop while interrogating perps. Cruising streets of lavender twilight and tobacco haze, one sweet-talks their way out of trouble, the other shoots first and asks questions never. But when the red-faced commish threatens to pull them from the case, you can bet they’ll get their man.
DRINK NOW: 45+ minute decant CELLAR: Now through 6-8 years
2022 NUTS & BOLTS
Varietal: Syrah
AVA: California
Aging: 90% New French Oak for 18 months
1118 cases made
TASTING NOTES: Grandma always told you: never get into an Old West-style duel with a flintlock-wielding grizzly bear. But now, you’ve gone and completely ignored that advice. First pace, charred raspberry tree bark. Second pace, leather quivers full of white flowers. Third pace, molasses marble mushroom stew. Fourth pace, roast brisket meat hooks. Fifth, mulberry maple-hilted bowie knives. Then you turn to find razor-sharp claws, mineral-tinged fisticuffs, and the answer to the lingering question of how gram-gram got that scar.
DRINK NOW: 30 minute decant CELLAR: Now through 7-8 Years
2022 MILK & HONEY
Varietals: 80% Tempranillo, 20% Syrah
AVA: Paso Robles
Aging: 85% New French Oak for 18 months
647 cases made
TASTING NOTES: Word around town is that the late-shift bartender at The Excelsior Lounge tells fortunes based on your order. So of course you’re there on a Tuesday night, tearing the menu a new one, just to see what she says. Bistecca fiorentina with a bleu cheese tower, porcini mushrooms in sage-infused motor oil, cacao-loaded dueling pistols, plum-jam-slathered Cartier watches, elderflower-encrusted crocodile, blackberry bourbon on repeat. She serves the plates one after another, and when she predicts you’ll want a dessert menu, you know she’s the real deal.
DRINK NOW: 1 hour decant CELLAR: Now through 7-8 years
2022 FIRST TIME CALLER
Varietal: Petite Sirah
AVA: Paso Robles
Aging: 80% New French Oak for 18 months
527 cases made
TASTING NOTES: It’s midnight at the MGM recording studio and Sammy Davis Jr.’s on the mic. Rat Pack gathered in blueberry silk Armani suits, Dark chocolate leather booths, Shou Pu-erh tea in mahogany mugs, red velvet vocals crooned into a Shure SM56. Word to the sound engineer is: turn up the earth and spice. Fade in the quatre épices. Let the sweet black sesame echo. Then Sinatra’s looking your way and calling for backup vocals. You might’ve come to sweep the floors, but you’ll leave as a superstar.
DRINK NOW: 1 hour decant CELLAR: Now through 10+ years
2021 BIEN NACIDO
Varietal: Syrah
AVA: Santa Maria Valley
Aging: 100% New French Oak for 30 months
383 cases made
TASTING NOTES: This is a breakneck jai alai match on a warm Miami night. Watch the ball rebound off red-berry graffitied walls, whipping through air hazy with cherry cola and Arturo Fuente cigar smoke. All that chili-flake velocity, corralled and redirected into sweet tomato and paprika-dusted depths. Ricocheting from one to the next faster than you can track—a stunning dichotomy of raw power and obsidian calm. And when someone hands you a wicker scoop, all you can do is close your eyes, let it rip, and hope you don’t catch it with your face.
DRINK NOW: 1 hour decant CELLAR: Now through 6-8 years
LIMITED RELEASE WINE
2023 AFTER HOURS
Varietal: Rosé of Grenache
AVA: California
Aging: Neutral barrel fermented and aged, saigneé style
159 cases made
TASTING NOTES: TThis is a maid of honor toast delivered from the fuselage of a Black Hawk helicopter, hovering just above the DJ booth. Clad in a watermelon A-line and blood orange bandoliers, she’s reeling off apple-tart anecdotes and cherry glaze jokes, shouting above the chopper’s slate-and-spice rotor blades. Rhubarb sorbet, cardamom cake-toppers, pink Starburst, and sour cherry cufflinks, flying around the room. And if you’re impressed by her cool composure now, just wait until she holds back tears while landing it on the dance floor.
DRINK NOW: YOU DRINK THIS NOW.
2021 BUCKLE BUNNY
Varietal: Marsanne
AVA: Edna Valley
Aging: 33% New French Oak for 18 months
67 cases made
TASTING NOTES: A summer evening alone with Tommy LeBelle means it’s time to pop in that old VHS copy of Point Break. Images pierce the lemon-zest static: breaking waves of peach and melon, beeswax surfboards, and savory saline breezes. Vanilla flickering fireflies, the distant sound of a lawnmower, acacia-carved bracelets, and honey-dipped temptation whenever he leans close. You usually wouldn’t make the first move, but no one’s home, the almond-flower air is intoxicating—and if Reaves, Swayze, and the boys can soar from the open hatch of a dual-propeller plane, so can you.
DRINK NOW: 30 minute decant CELLAR: Now through 8 years
2022 SMASH CITY
Varietal: Pinot Noir
AVA: Santa Maria Valley
Aging: 80% New French Oak for 18 months
130 cases made
TASTING NOTES: You were skeptical when Cirque du Soleil brought out NBA legend Dennis Rodman as a backup trapeze artist, but you’ll be damned if he’s not killing it. All 6’7” of him, vibrant hair and rebound-snagging tenacity, pulling out candied cherry Planches, steel strawberry straddle whips, suspended sage and savory herb layouts, shaved graphite pullover shoots, seamlessly integrated from one to the next. And if you think he’s going to bail on the biggest trick of the night because his catcher looks terrified, you better think again.
DRINK NOW: Splash decant into thermos CELLAR: It’ll last, but what’s the point?
2021 SLIDE HILL
Varietals: 60% Syrah, 40% Grenache
AVA: Edna Valley
Aging: 100% New French Oak for 30 months
249 cases made
TASTING NOTES: All the triumph and unbridled pleasure of freewheeling down the Columbia Gorge Highway in a 1963 Jeep Gladiator while you should be at a board meeting. Black gooseberry granite cliffs, peppered rabbit jerky, wild raspberry from roadside stands, broiled Simka plum buckshot, bramble-tangled blowtorch, and loganberry brandy from a black steel flask. Those boardroom big-shots and spreadsheet slideshows will have to wait, because this is the best wrong turn you’ve ever made.
DRINK NOW: 1+ hour decant CELLAR: Now through 10 years