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The Experience
Aroma: Concentrated, spicy black fruit, dense with blackberry, cassis, and anise spice, and hints of toast, vanilla, lavender and dried herbs.

Palate: Ripe, viscous and concentrated fruit with currant, blackberry and cassis flavors. Rich mouthfeel, with great volume and thick, chewy tannins lingering on the finish.

The Vineyards
The 2003 Private Stock is a blend of our most intense concentrated cabernet lots for the vintage. The core is from our oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines grown in the rocky soils of our special 16 rows block located in the heart of our Oakville Estate. These vines produce small grape clusters, small flavorful berries and an intense, powerful Cabernet wine. The 2003 growing season produced Cabernet vines with good natural balance requiring less canopy management compared to 2002. Conditions leading up to harvest were challenging with consistently warm temps in September with several heat spikes so irrigation management was critical to keep vines healthy. The result was good physiological maturity and flavor development. October brought cooler temps and allowed us to be patient with our picking decisions. We picked 80% of our Cabernet in mid October, 2 weeks later than the 2002 vintage.

The Winemaking
Gentle fruit handling, small batch fermentations and attention to detail basically describes the way we handle our grapes at Vine Cliff. Our grapes are hand picked and sorted before being destemmed into small stainless steel fermentors. After two days cold soak, the must was warmed and inoculated with yeast. Average maceration time was two weeks, down from an average of three weeks in 2002. This change was initiated to reduce the amount tannin extraction in the individual wine lots. This resulted in the extraction of ripe flavors and concentration of fruit without the presence of harsh tannins. Less egg white fining was needed which results in a richer wine. French Chateau barrels are used for ageing in our wine caves. Individual vineyard blocks are aged as separate wine lots until the final blend was determined.