Star Lane Astral 2014

VINTAGE As a producer all you can ask from Mother Nature is to avoid extremes and for enough time to get everything accomplished how you want, but more importantly, when you want. 2013 was exactly that. While a warm, dry spring advanced the season placing the ripening times in August and September instead of September and October, we avoided the dramatic heat spells that often accompany such advanced timing. This allowed all grapes to be harvested at a time that was correct for that variety, ranch, and specific block. The vintage is one with tremendous purity and freshness.

WINEMAKER NOTES By 2012 we had discovered an increasing reliance on our own-rooted Cabernet Sauvignon vines to produce Astral. As a wine of selection, we look for key vineyard blocks, and key wine lots from those sections, that provide at once complete wines bearing the hallmarks of complexity, full texture, balance, length and age ability combined with pure deliciousness. The own rooted Cabernet from three important sections of the vineyard (one the highest planted block at 1,500’ above sea level) continue to provide this fruit. On top of that we are able to improve complexity with a higher percentage of new French oak without it appearing to overwhelm the wine’s character. The wine rounded off by a couple of other key parcels to produce this special selection.

TASTING NOTES Honestly, tasting notes with Cabernet Sauvignon of this nature, of this youth, can be daunting. The reason: in its youth it is shrouded in floral mystery and while extremely pleasing, deconstructing it into specific characters seem trite. At different moments different characters like sage, dark black berry, anise, chocolate all seem to make an appearance but the wine seems to point us towards patience, begging for time allow the secondary characters to develop and its purity to shine. The texture is deep and dense but somehow not heavy. Instead it coats the palate but finishes fresh enough to evoke another sip, another glass. Cellar several bottles so you can watch its evolution.