Napa Valley Wine Reflects Its North Carolina Connection

Two North Carolina businessmen are partners in a unique wine venture that will combine North Carolina investment “know-how” and passion for the finest grapes from among the most acclaimed vineyards in California wine country. The two North Carolinians are Dusty Field and Jason Earnest. These two Raleigh entrepreneurs share a winemaker’s dream: create blockbuster wines that will attract and delight a loyal following among wine fans. They have assembled a team of winemakers in Napa whose assignment is to make world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah. The winemakers have chosen three top vineyards that are praised for their stunning wines. That’s where the prized grapes have been “sourced”. Appropriately, this wine will boast a label that reflects the North Carolina “connection” for this adventure: It will be called Tobacco Road Cellars (TRC). The first release of TRC’s 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Mélange will be on November 1, 2006. The production of this boutique winery offering is limited to ensure superior quality. Orders are being accepted now www.tobaccoroadcellars.com. Additional details on the TRC Fall Wine release and more about TRC in general can also be found at the web site: www.tobaccoroadcellars.

General Manager and Chief Winemaker, Michael Zitzlaff leads this highly experienced team along with Kian Tavakoli, a 10-year master winemaker. Zitzlaff brings international experience from his winemaking in Australia where he won international awards including 2002 International Wine Challenge in London and “Best New World Pinot Noir”. Earlier in 2000 at the London International Wine and Spirit Competition, Zitzlaff’s wines earned “Best Australian Red Wine of Show” and the Stag’s Leap Trophy for the “Best Cabernet Sauvignon of Show”. Master Winemaker Kian Tavakoli was most recently the winemaker at Clos Du Val where he ran their Red Wine program - including their highly-acclaimed reserve bottling. Before joining Clos Du Val, Kian spent four years learning cabernet winemaking at Opus One. With over 10 years of winemaking, operations and viticulture experience, Kian brings a stellar combination of sensory and production skills to Tobacco Road Cellars.

It takes great grapes to make great wine. That lesson finds expression in the selection of three top vineyards already known for their world class grapes. In Napa, the Cabernet Sauvignon will be sourced from the legendary To Kalon Vineyard located in the historic Oakville region at the base of the Mayacamas Mountain range. To Kalon experiences warm daytime temperatures tempered by the morning and evening fog influence from the Pacific Ocean. The vineyard was first planted in 1868 and was named "To Kalon," which means "the beautiful" in Greek. The Pinot Noir was selected from the special soils and coastal breezes of the Russian River Valley in the Amber Ridge Vineyard of Sonoma. The Syrah is grown from the newly heralded central coast areas near Santa Barbara at the White Hawk Vineyard, which is planted on ancient sand dunes on the south-facing slope of Cat Canyon, a side canyon of the Los Alamos Valley. This region is quickly being recognized by wine connoisseurs the world over as a top producing wine region. Fog often embraces the small vineyard in the morning before gentle afternoon breezes chase it away to allow the sun's rays to slowly ripen the fruit.

Dusty Field, President/CEO of Boylan Investment Company, a Raleigh-based real estate investment and development company, has put his management and entrepreneur background into the new winery. With 14 years as an entrepreneur, Dusty brings business-development expertise, results-oriented insight, and a passion for new business ventures. He and his successful partner, Jason Earnest, chose to invest in General Manager Michael Zitzlaff and Master Winemaker Kian Tavakoli by co-founding Tobacco Road Cellars, a start-up wine company with a new concept in ultra premier California artisan wines. In 2005, Dusty was awarded the Top 40 under 40 Award, a prestigious award that honors the most promising young business people in the Triangle, North Carolina area. Boylan Companies, was also chosen in 2005 as one of the top thirty companies to work for in the Triangle.

Tobacco Road Cellars' co-founder and Principal, Jason Earnest, is a forward thinking entrepreneur and financial professional in Raleigh, North Carolina. As Jason realizes his dream of creating a world class wine company, he is also a Partner in Boylan Financial Group, a division of the Boylan Companies, that assists high net worth individuals, families and business owners accumulate, enhance and preserve wealth for future generations.

Tobacco Road symbolizes a history of tradition in North Carolina, with a reputation and commitment to excellence. “We embrace these values and capture them into every bottle of wine to ensure our customers’ experience is delicious, enjoyable and nothing less than superior” says Jason. "This is where we grew up, where we live and run our businesses…this common bond left no alternative to name our wine company...Tobacco Road Cellars" added Dusty.

For more information please contact Jason Earnest at 888-770-3635 or email info@tobaccoroadcellars.com

Crush 2006!

It’s a special time of year in wine country. Days are long and the work is exhausting, but there is a magic surrounding harvest. Vines are laden with sweet clusters of grapes and hopes are high about the quality of wine that fruit will ultimately yield. Despite an especially wet late spring, Tobacco Road Cellars is confident 2006 will be a good year in our vineyards. With this great news, come some more great news…U.S. wine consumption climbed 2.1% in 2005 to 273.7 million 9-liter cases, the latest increase in more than a decade of steady growth and a new all-time high on a case basis,
according to the 2006 edition of Adams Wine Handbook.

Well if you’re on our site and have a love for wine you know that we are in the hart of harvest and crush for the 2006 season. Crush seasons only lasts about eight weeks, and we must pick, transport and crush all the grapes needed for their annual supply of wine in that short time. Crush seasons are busy, hectic times for Tobacco Road personnel and twelve or fourteen-hour workdays are quite common. Our winemaking team has prepared a detailed crush plan early each season to reduce the number of high-risk decisions. Crush plans should be formulated many weeks before harvest time, and then the plan should be followed until all of the new wines are safely stored away in the cellar.

One of the first steps our team needs to decide is how many gallons of each variety will be produced. Once the varieties and quantities have been established, the more detailed winemaking issues such as potential sources of grapes, fruit costs, equipment cleaning, cooperage requirements, etc. can be addressed.
The quantity of wine produced from a ton of grapes is called wine yield, and wine yield depends on the variety of the grapes, the type of equipment available, the winemaking techniques and our production levels. Our winemaking team, using modern horizontal presses, often get 160 or 170 gallons of quality wine from a ton of fruit. Wine stored in barrels evaporates, and significant quantities of wine are lost each time wine is racked. Wine containers must be “topped up” periodically. Extra wine is always needed to keep the containers full, so we will routinely produce extra wine (10 - 15%) to use as "topping material."

Getting grapes from the same vineyard each season is a major advantage of Tobacco Road Cellars. Michael and Kian learn what to expect from the fruit when grapes from the same vineyard are processed year after year, which allows us to make any adjustments, and “fine tune” the wine easily. These small adjustments are important to wine quality, so we prefer to work with fruit from the same vineyards each season.

For many people the image of a grape harvest is linked to the hilarious "I Love Lucy" episode where Lucy stomps grapes in Italy. Although some people still make wine with the old-fashioned foot method, we have automated the crush process to extract the “free run juice”. This free run juice has an unbelievable flavor. Few people realize how sweet wine grapes are when they ripen. Sugar levels in grapes create the alcohol in the wine. In order to make wine that will remain stable and not go bad, you need sugar levels that are 21 percent or above. As harvest approaches, sugar levels are frequently checked in the vineyard and they can change dramatically depending on weather. Too much sun can mean too much sugar and not enough acidity in the grapes. Conversely, in a cool spell, grapes have trouble ripening to the appropriate sweetness. Sugar levels in grapes are measured on what is called a Brix scale. Growers squeeze a little grape juice onto a refractometer to read the results. In California, we often see wine grapes picked at a Brix of 23 to 26.

Wine 101: Tasting and Appreciating

There is culture in wine. It can be found in the ritual of drinking it, appreciating the craft of the winemaker, and in the wine's stimulation to our taste buds. So now, why don’t we cover the basics of wine…What I like to call Wine 101.

When we drink wine, our taste buds are stimulated in a unique way and the alcohol has a calming effect on the brain. When we taste we experience four senses: sweetness, saltiness, acidity and bitterness. The acidity and sweetness in wine are the two factors that balance together to produce a pleasant sensation on our sense of taste. We taste the acidity with the middle of the tongue and sweetness with the tip of the tongue.

Wines high in acidity taste harsh, those with insufficient acidity taste dull and their flavor does not linger in the mouth long enough. So the million dollar question is: What are tannins? You’ve heard it…you’ve been explained it…you thought you understood it…but you’re still not quite sure you got it. Tannins contribute to the relationship of bitterness on the tongue. If you've ever chewed into grape seeds, then you've tasted the dry bitterness of tannin. Wine with too much tannin is unpleasantly bitter. The right level of tannin has an effect of bringing all the flavors together with a great balance in the mouth. The various fruit-like flavors detectable in wine contribute nuances to the sweetness we taste. It's fun trying to detect different fruit characteristics, such as berries, plums, apples, pears...Or the now infamous line from the movie Sideways: “Ohhh…hint of strawberries & umm I think a hint of asparagus”. Classic!

Other notable senses involved in appreciating wine are sight & smell. Our sight enjoys the color and our sense of smell enjoys the fragrances. Much of a wine's character is revealed only through the aroma it exudes. This adds richly to the dimensions found in wine.

Wine Grape Varieties
There are many species of grapes and this story could drag on to boredom if we tried to cover them all. So for your sake and mine, we’ll cover the most popular. Most of the world's wine is made from the Vitis vinifera family, of European origin. Wine grapes have various unique, signature characteristics. Check out the following varietal grapes:

Popular Red Varieties
 Cabernet Sauvignon
 Grenache
 Merlot
 Pinot Noir
 Sangiovese
 Syrah (Shiraz)
 Tempranillo
 Zinfandel

Popular White Varieties
 Chardonnay
 Gewürztraminer
 Grüner Veltliner
 Pinot Blanc
 Riesling
 Sauvignon Blanc
 Semillon

How Wine is Made
Wine grapes grow easily in any temperate to warm climate. A solution of sugar and water develops in ripe grapes and the skins easily allow the growth of natural yeasts. In the fermentation process, these single cell organisms consume the natural sugar and change it into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. This rather simple process has been observed and used for thousands of years in human culture. In the past hundred years or so, technology and new ideas from winemakers have played an ever-increasing role in the making of wine. It's becoming more and more a science and an art.

Here are the basic principles of winemaking. The grapes are either harvested by hand, as we do at Tobacco Road Cellars, or with mechanical harvesters. Exposure to air should be kept to a minimum at all stages of the process. Sometimes powdered sulfites are sprinkled on the grapes prior to crushing to prevent too much reaction with the air. The fermentation usually takes place in open vats. Several processes may be employed to give the wine clarity: fining and filtration for example. Shortly after fermentation has ended, the wine is transferred to a settling tank where filtration and other clarification techniques may be used.

The Differences Between Red Wine and White Winemaking
There are significant differences between red wine and white wine production. This is the main reason that Tobacco Road Cellars only produces limited production Red Wine. In order to maintain the highest quality wine we need to focus our time and energy on “trying”…key word here…”trying” to perfect our Pinot Noir, Syrah and Cabernet. Basically, red wine is the outcome of crushed, fermented grapes. White wine is the outcome of fermented grape juice (that is, no skins or meat of the fruit).

Red Wine
All grapes contain the same kind of green fruity-meat, but red grapes have red skins and in the winemaking process, there is a considerable amount of color, flavors and tannins that are imparted to the final product. After crushing, the red grapes, skins and all, sit in a fermentation vat for a period of time. Picture a huge plastic bin with a mixture of crushed grapes and juice with a layer of crushed wet skins on top. The skins tend to rise to the surface of the mixture, forming a layer on top. This top layer is frequently mixed back into the fermenting juice (called must). After fermentation has stopped, about one to two weeks later, the new wine is drawn from the vat. A bit of "free run" juice is allowed to pour and then the remaining must is squeezed, yielding "press wine". The wine is clarified and then transferred to oak aging barrels so that it may mature. When the winemaker considers the wine ready, it is transferred to bottles and labeled.

White Wine
Right after picking, white grapes are put into a crushing machine. In the process, the skins are separated from the juice, an important difference over the red wine process. Some adjustments are sometimes made to the acid or sugar levels at this stage (the addition of sugar is called "chaptalization"). The clarified juice is then ready for fermentation.

Yeast is then added to the juice for fermentation. Before long the white grape juice becomes white wine. At this point, some further tinkering is usually called for: filtering, and perhaps the addition of sweeter juice to round out the flavor. The wine is then aged by storing in oak or stainless steel containers, and after a few months, it is bottled.

Check out www.tobaccoroadcellars.com for more information in our “Winemaking” page and order our limited production rare wines.

Welcome Tobacco Road's New Chief Winemaker

Tobacco Road Cellars would like to announce the newest member of our winemaking team, Michael Zitzlaff. Michael is the new General Manager and Chief Winemaker for Tobacco Road Cellars, overseeing all aspects of the production of our Sonoma Pinot Noir, Santa Barbara Syrah and Napa Valley Cabernet. Michael brings a stellar background and expertise to the team and we look forward to continuing to produce the highest quality wines at Tobacco Road. In 1986 Michael commenced a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Oenology at Australia’s famed Roseworthy Agricultural College graduating in December 1988. During this time Michael travelled to the University of Bordeaux in France to research his major paper on “The effect of pomace contact on wine quality of Cabernet Sauvignon” which was subsequently published in the Australian Grape Grower and Winemaker in April 1989. While at Roseworthy, Michael had full winemaking responsibility for his family’s winery; Oakridge Estate located in the Yarra Valley, one hour East of Melbourne.

In 1996 after successfully building the Oakridge wine brand nationally and internationally, Michael initiated and managed an IPO in Oakridge Vineyards Limited which successfully raised development capital to fund future growth whilst providing a new winery and cellar door facility on the central valley floor along the main tourist route of the region.

By the age of 35, Michael had been Chief Winemaker and Managing Director of Oakridge Estate Property Ltd and subsequently Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Winemaker of Oakridge Vineyards Limited. In 2001, Oakridge Vineyards Limited was purchased by a larger, West Australian based public wine company wishing to increase its market presence in Australia's ultra-premium Eastern markets. During his time as CEO and Chief Winemaker, Michael spent considerable time developing export markets throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

His wines have been recognised internationally receiving amongst others the “Warren Winiarski – Stag’s Leap Trophy” for “Best Cabernet Sauvignon of Show” and “The Wolf Blass Trophy” for “Best Australian Red Wine of Show” at the International Wine and Spirit Competition, London in 2000 and receiving the award for “Best New World Pinot Noir” at the International Wine Challenge in London, 2002.

In 2005 Michael worked for Pat Rooney and Marco DiGulio at Girard Winery in St Helena covering all aspects of crush management for the 2005 harvest. Michael is also Managing Director of Oenology Australia Pty Ltd his own personal consulting company specialising in winemaking technical advice and wine industry management for Australian and international clients.

The Seduction of Pinot Noir

No wine can seduce like Pinot Noir or Burgundy. Sure you can be overwhelmed by a rich full-bodied Cabernet or teased by a spicy nutty Syrah or even mesmerized by proprietary blend of Pinotage from South Africa. But none, at least in my experience, has Pinot’s sensuousness: the perfumed nose of red berries and violets, the ruby red colors, the silky body, the rich tastes of raspberry, strawberry, black cherry, and vanilla. And, if you’re lucky, a finish that makes you long for more.
Pinot Noir is the most complicated wine in terms of production and the resultant flavor. Though it is hard to imagine a Pinot Noir at lower prices, yet there are cheap Pinot Noirs. However, Pinot Noirs can be cheaper and taste like Pinot Noirs.
A really good wine is compelling, in large part, because it has a distinct personality. By "personality" I don’t mean an identifiable character trait or two. After all, almost every wine has a couple of qualities that can be used to describe it: strawberries and oaky, silky and smoky, or on a rare case tasting like burnt bacon. I hate it when that happens…unless it’s breakfast.
My own search for wines with personality usually brings me to the doorstep of Pinot Noir. Like countless other wine lovers, I have had my most exalted wine experiences with Pinot Noir such as with Kent Fortner’s Green Truck Cellars Pinot Noir, Lucia Vineyards and Melville.
The wine never lets you rest. The great ones are so delicious that you'll go through a dozen weasels hoping to capture the rapture again.
So what is it that makes great Pinot Noir so special, so charismatic, so full of personality?
Pinot Noir's sensuality is based on its smell, its taste, and its beguiling texture - the way it rests or dances or explodes against the taste buds. Unlike many types of wine, Pinot's physicality is obvious.
Part of the reason for Pinot’s seduction has to do with tannin - or more precisely, a lack thereof. Tannin is that component in a grape's skin and seeds that gives wine a structural backbone, makes it powerful, and, in the wine's youth anyway, can make it taste "tight" and ungenerous. Compared with Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, for example, Pinot Noir has very little tannin. And therein lies its natural suppleness.
Remarkably, Pinot Noir is also an intellectual's wine. Don’t run away scared…this doesn’t mean you have to be an intellectual to drink it, because I drink it often! The wine plays mind games better than any other varietal. You taste it, you think you've got a handle on it, and the next minute, 20 other smells and flavors show up in the glass. By the time you've finished the glass, you're convinced that there is still something else - something hopelessly impossible to describe - lurking just beyond knowing. So, what does every Pinot fan do? Open another bottle of course!

OK…So you ask yourself…”What’s the deal with Pinot and Burgundy?”

Pinot Noir is not easy to grow and, in fact, only makes good-to-great wine in a few places on earth. These regions are usually a little cool, overcast, and what viticulturists call "marginal." In other words, Pinot Noir, like an artist, needs to live life on the edge.
And what are those places? Above all, the Burgundy region of France, and then: Oregon and certain parts of California (notably the Russian River Valley and Amber Ridge Vineyard from which we source our Tobacco Road Pinot Noir.)
In France, Pinot Noir is the only grape that can be used to produce red Burgundy and it is often regarded as the canvas for displaying the region’s terroirs—the distinctive characteristics of the vineyards’ soils. In fact, it is the pride taken in terroir that accounts for Burgundy's complex classifications that require considerable time, study, and tasting to understand.
French Burgundies tend to be higher priced. Due to their rarity and popularity, many of the very good wines are around $60 a bottle; The "big name" wines can cost several hundred dollars a bottle. These are clearly not everynight dinner wines unless you’re Tobacco Road’s Co-Founder Dusty Field. (hahaha)
In the United States, excellent Pinot Noir is produced both in California and Oregon. However, do not confuse California Pinot Noir with California Burgundy. The latter is often a jug wine made from a blend of grapes that might not contain any Pinot Noir whatsoever. I would also hesitate to compare American Pinot Noir with French Burgundy, since the unique characteristics of terroir that manifest themselves in the French will never be found in the American. Nonetheless our Pinots can be magnificent, especially those from some of the leading producers such as Tobacco Road Cellars.

What makes our Cabernet a Cult Wine?

How much would you pay for a bottle of wine? $20? $40? How about $500 or $1,000? Pretty crazy huh! In recent years wine collectors have been paying the ultimate price for California's so-called "Cult Wines." My mom and other novice wine connoisseurs are asking…”Why?”

Our 2005 Tobacco Road Cabernet Sauvignon from To Kalon Vineyards in the Oakville district of Napa Valley, is our top-of-the-line wine & described as "rich" and "pure" and rare. That's the key component in creating a cult wine: Scarcity. We are producing a limited quantity of 25 cases and we expect to sell out within the first week of release. The price you pay for premium quality, scarce wine from Tobacco Road, $125/bottle. A great deal considering other wineries producing wine from To Kalon range from $189-$295/bottle. Our three and six pack orders are shipped in a custom wood crate for easy storing and a beautiful display.

Most large wineries produce hundreds of thousands of cases. Tobacco Road numbers its cases in the hundreds…150 to be exact, and those are most likely sold before they're even released, through the Road Crew mailing list and pre release sales online.

If you can't buy Tobacco Road at Tobacco Road, where do you go? Well, you can break out the checkbook and hit the internet…scouring auction sites for bottles picked up by a collector or you can collect dust and wait for the next release of our wines. But at Tobacco Road Cellars, we want customers drinking our wine, not making an investment or reselling it. Tobacco Road symbolizes a history of tradition, with a reputation for excellence. We embrace these values and implement them into every bottle of wine to ensure that your experience is nothing less than superior.

Syrah-Is it the new Pinot craze?!?

Tobacco Road Cellars: July 27th: It’s easy to have pinot envy ever since the ever so popular movie Sideways. The character, "Miles" deep love for the finiky grape started a wine phenomenon like we've ever seen. Early on, this new-to-California varietal was a hard sell to consumers who weren't already fans of the wines from the Rhone Valley in France, where Syrah has been growing for hundreds of years on the hillsides along the Rhone River from Vienne to Valence. But Pinot Noir is everywhere these days, as the world is discovering the luxurious wines of Santa Barbara County. But just over the hill from the famed Santa Rita Hills appellation, another star is emerging: Syrah from White Hawk Vineyard. Recent private tastings and wine futures discussions are pointing to a possible new star and, it’s that syrah is poised to make pinot noir, and other wines, jealous.
Syrah (also called shiraz in other parts of the world) is hitting its stride here at home. We are seeing a new trend in wine country and it's saying Syrah is very hip. The cool thing about syrah is that it adapts to various growing conditions very well. Syrah grapes have thick skins and it thrives remarkably well in an assortment of different microclimates, from cool areas like Lompoc all the way to the oppressively hot Happy Canyon area, resulting in a wide field of flavors. As one of the best producers of the varietal in Santa Barbara County, Tobacco Road understands that syrah can make excellent easy-drinking wines that don’t break the wallet.
The grape’s ability to thrive in unusual weather and adverse conditions makes it a very forgiving varietal and even in difficult vintages it can still taste great. The reason that our Syrah can flourish in difficult vintages is because it uniquely represents the soil which it came from, which is why we're excited about our 2005 White Hawk Vineyard. We believe that White Hawk is responsible for 90 percent of what's in the bottle. “Will it replace pinot or cabernet?" I don’t know... the good news for our customers is that they can have all three!! Check out www.tobaccoroadcellars.com for more information on how you can try the sampler...Our 2006 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley, 2005 Cabernet ToKalon Napa Valley and last but certainly not least the 2005 Syrah White Hawk Vineyard, Santa Barbara.

2006 Napa Valley Harvest Update

Tobacco Road Cellars: (July 24th) We are experiencing a record heat over the past several weeks has moved our vines along very well. 2006 Was a late start because of the cool and wet spring, but the late heat surge has put us only days behind schedule.

Grapes experience two phases of growth with a resting period, or down time in between. The grapes have finished their first phase of growth, which consists of cellular division. This is a good time to impose a water deficit because this will limit the final size of the berry and thereby increase the concentration of flavors and tannins, particularly desirable in our red wine grapes. Now that we are experiencing heat and the cellular division phase has passed, we are turning on the irrigation.
The berries are now at 'down time.' During the 'down time', there are metabolic activities that change inside the berry, but they do not significantly affect berry weight. The seeds harden and nutrients are being allocated into the berry from the rest of the plant. This is a great time for viticulturists because it gives us our first reliable peak into crop yields. During the down time, the berries are about half of their final weight. Viticulturists can therefore count and weigh clusters to get an idea of the crop yields during harvest. Of course, many things can happen between now and harvest, but this is a reasonable indicator of yield as long as there is no loss to dehydration, sunburn, disease, or other animals such as birds.
The down time assessment also helps us determine how much crop to thin. Concentration and intensity of flavors in wine is generally considered to be inversely proportionate to yield in a reasonable yield range. Lighter crops are generally better quality, although too little fruit can also be problematic. The idea is to get the best vine balance between the vegetation and the fruit production.

The second phase of berry growth is marked by veraison, the onset of maturation in the grapes. This second phase is cellular expansion. Water, sugar, and nutrients begin to fill the berry, and thereby dilute the intense acidity. In red grapes, veraison is very obvious because we see color pigment. In both red and white grapes, the berries soften, become more translucent, increase in sugar content, and decrease in acidity. The tannins also change during maturation to become more soft and supple rather than astringent and green.
We are anxiously awaiting veraison. This year is unusual because all of the varieties are moving through their growth phases at the same time, indicating the possibility of a condensed harvest, especially if warm temperatures prevail for the rest of the season. This year, our Syrah from White Hawk Vineyard in Santa Barbara is coming along nicely & the Russian River Valley Pinot Noir also looks like it will produce an amazing sized crop this year.

Visit www.tobaccoroadcellars.com for more information

2005 Cabernet Sauvingon To Kalon Vineyards Napa Valley

Tobacco Road Cellars is extremely excited about how our 2005 Cabernet from To Kalon Vineyards in Napa Valley is progressing. We were thrilled with the prospect of not just a great quality harvest, but an outstanding one for vintage 2005. The year began with wet weather, followed by a dry period in March, then continued rainfall well into spring with later than usual bloom and set on the vine. The valley experienced unseasonable precipitation into early June.
The cool weather continued, with a pleasant summer with few heat spikes, which we are currently seeing the same weather pattern this year, (2006). As September approached, growers had concern that the larger than normal crop on the vine would not fully ripen as fog prevailed well into when warm temperatures of Indian Summer typically prevail to harvest. Eventually, though later than normal, the warm days arrived, building much-needed sugars, for our Cabernet.

As harvest began, we had the best of scenarios; an extended hang time with perfectly balanced sugars and acids. Colors in red wines, particularly in our To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon, were intense, inky-dark and opulent. Visit www.tobaccoroadcellars.com for more information.