Bypassing Every Adult System
TASTING NOTES:
Pickberry Vineyard, Sonoma Mountain - “This wine beautifully expresses the history and prestige of one of Sonoma’s most acclaimed vineyard sites. First established in the early 1970s on the volcanic slopes of Sonoma Mountain, Pickberry Vineyard has become synonymous with depth, elegance, and age-worthy structure, producing award-winning wines that reflect both terroir and meticulous farming. This blend captures that legacy by weaving together the plushness of Merlot, the dark-fruited intensity of Cabernet Sauvignon, and the spice and lift of varieties like Malbec and Cabernet Franc. Aromatics of blackberry, blueberry, and violet are layered with subtle notes of menthol, sage, and baking spice, leading into flavors of plum, black currant, cocoa, and a hint of dried herbs. The palate is full and harmonious, with balanced acidity, well-integrated tannins, and a long, polished finish. Both approachable and cellar-worthy, this mixed red showcases the power and finesse for which Pickberry is known, pairing beautifully with roasted lamb, braised short ribs, or rich vegetarian stews, while promising further complexity with time in bottle. The wine is perfect to cellar or pop open for a nice steak!” (AbV 13.7%, pH 3.61, TA 5.5 g/L)
55% Merlot, 20% Malbec, 15% Petite Verdot, and 10% Cabernet Franc · After a two-day cold soak, short fermentations with regular aerative pumpovers and delastage. Then gently pressed into oak barrels. 24 months, 30% new French oak.
Oak Shade Ranch, Sonoma Mountain - “This Merlot comes from 800 ft. in elevation on Sonoma Mountain. This red has a deep, dense ruby-red color with hints of purple at the rim. It has an intense and complex bouquet of ripe dark fruits like blackcurrant, blackberry, and plum. Secondary aromas of cedar and vanilla. On the palate, this is a full-bodied wine with black fruit notes and well-integrated tannins. This provides a good structure and grip, but also provides a balanced acidity. The wine finishes with smooth dark chocolate and earthy notes adding depth and persisting flavors. The wine is perfect to cellar or pop open for a nice steak!” (AbV 14.8%, pH 3.58, TA 6.11 g/L)
Merlot · After a two-day cold soak, short fermentations with regular aerative pumpovers and delastage. Then gently pressed into oak barrels. 18 months, 30% new French Oak
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Pickberry Vineyard, one of the sources for this blend, was first planted in the early 1970s.
Pickberry.
There is a moment in every childhood summer that exists outside of time. You are crouching in a scratchy thicket somewhere — a hedgerow, a ditch, the wild tangle behind someone’s backyard fence — and you are picking berries directly into your mouth, bypassing every adult system ever devised for the collection and distribution of food. No bowl. No grocery store. No middleman. Just you, the branch, and the understanding that this is exactly what hands are for.
The berries are never quite as good as you remember them being the last time. They’re a little tart, a little warm from the sun, occasionally housing a small insect you’d rather not think about. But that’s not the point. The point is that you found them. You, personally, located a food source in the wild and consumed it, like some tiny competent mammal. The pride of this is enormous and completely irrational, given that the berries were four feet off a suburban sidewalk. You were not Bear Grylls. You were eight years old in New Jersey. And yet.
Nobody ever really loses that feeling. It just migrates — into heirloom tomatoes grown in a pot on a fire escape, into sourdough starters that are treated like family members, into, yes, small-lot wines made from specific hillside parcels that somebody actually knows the name of. The thrill of the particular. The quietly radical act of knowing where something came from.
