VHR Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 Vintage

VHR 2015 In an unprecedented streak—and despite continued drought conditions across the state of California—the Napa Valley experienced its fourth consecutive exceptional growing season, delivering exemplary vintages for 2012, 2013, 2014 and now 2015. At Vine Hill Ranch, the growing season was marked by late spring rainfall and consistently warm conditions punctuated by significant heat during harvest. An early onset to budbreak and a remarkably warm growing season produced a winegrape crop of superior quality. While limited in quantity, the vintage delivered an opulence and texture that have become signatures of our vineyard. Fruit harvested from Blocks 3, 4 and 6 contributed to a wine of singular character.

Block 3, planted to our deep gravelly loam benchland soils, introduces a surprisingly dark-fruited complexity, character and structure. Block 4 delivers vibrant red fruits, spirited mouthfeel and fine silky tannins, while Block 6 carries the flavor of its forest perimeter—dark fruit, bay laurel and chaparral—with structured brooding tannins.

The 2015 Vine Hill Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon offers beautiful floral notes of dried lavender and violet, with warm ripe blackberry, dark chocolate shavings, graham cracker, savory herbs, cedar, tobacco and cassis. Silk and velvet are layered over an intense, powerful core of lush, dark fruit, with refined tannins and a persistent finish. An energetic vein of minerality and acidity gives the wine a beautiful lift of brightness that frames the broad, generous ripe black cherry and blackberry fruit with hints of vanilla bean and mocha. Complex, balanced, full bodied and opulent, the wine seamlessly integrates the individual attributes of the contributing vineyard blocks to create a singular expression of the Vine Hill Ranch vineyard.

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