The Cliff Notes: This Pinot noir delivers dark fruit, iron and cherry on the nose. The palate is fresh, built on a frame of ripe red cherry, linear acid and mouth-filling tannin. Well balanced, it finishes on a long and dark tail-out of graham.

The Story: My friend Dale Hatfield is a meticulous farmer and the all-American kind of guy you’d expect to see on the front of a box of corn flakes. His wife Marcella and their passel of kids work hard to make Gemini Vineyards not just a farm, but a home. We’ve been working with this vibrant block of fruit since 2002. Like the Hatfield kids, it’s a good citizen and it likes to play well with others. We didn’t want to overlook or change that nature, just coax it out into the open and see how it would stand for itself. It took the intervening years and a combined effort of Dale’s tinkering in the vineyard and my time in the cellar to best understand and hone the “punchy red” truth of this vineyard on a consistent basis. Do we think it’s all that? Yeah, we do, and we hope you do too.

Cases Produced: 64

The Building of: Small-lot wild yeast fermentations, 100% barrel aged for 18 months in French oak barrels (one once filled, one twice-filled, one neutral). Bottled unfined and unfiltered in March of 2008.

Ageability: Probably decant to get it air within its first three years. Well cellared you should anticipate additional complexity during its first 10 years with a potential 12- to 20-year drinking horizon.

Alcohol: 13.75%

pH: 3.68

Vineyards: The Laurelwood soil of Gemini Vineyards is a rich wind-blown loess, which contributes vigor to the plants and good acid to the wines made from these grafted 15-year-old, Scott Henry–trained, Pommard-clone Pinot noir.