The Cliff Notes: The wine is bright red garnet in color, with a nose that suggests pungent berry, gunpowder, dusty oak spice and a hint of menthol. Fresh raspberry, strawberry and stonefruit (peach/cherry pit) with a touch of vanilla come through on the palate. The wine has a very fine and stable acid-driven structure that offers minerality, suggests ageability, and demands food.

The Story: ‘Let it hang’ is the story of Gemini Vineyard. Unlike most vineyards that get increasingly over-ripe with their associated ever-darker fruit flavors, this vineyard, due to its retention of acid, stays on a continuum, a veritable rail, headed toward a sunset of ever-riper red. Only when we think the grapes can’t stand any more, do we pick them. The result is my fashion advice to you: Red is the new red.

Cases Produced: 49

The Building of: Small-lot wild yeast fermentations, 100% barrel aged for 18 months in French oak barrels (one once filled, one twice-filled). Bottled unfined and unfiltered in March of 2009.

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%

pH: 3.59

Vineyards: The Laurelwood soil of Gemini Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains AVA is a rich wind-blown loess that contributes vigor to the plants and good acid to the wines made from these grapes, which are grafted 16-year-old Scott Henry trained Pommard clone Pinot noir.