2007 Provocateur will be available for sale upon its release on May 5th.

The Cliff Notes: The color is ruby, with a nose of cherry, black pepper and coffee and in a little time, a just-unwrapped Brach’s caramel. The bright and serious palate reveals cherry, raspberry and watermelon jolly rancher, and its lip-tingling structure moves on your tongue as through a broad flat pipe, filling the lower half of your mouth while floating a more ethereal layer on top. Then it lingers.

Cases Produced: 968

The Name: Provocateur is French for troublemaker. The picture is my grandpa. The leaning is/was/will be decidedly more Pied Piper than antagonist.

A Story: Then no longer matters. Now does. The story of this bottling has nothing to do with wine, but rather, economics and Johnny Cash. We bottle our wine much later than most and had assembled our blends in barrel by the time the economy hit the skids. Doesn’t matter. Could have stayed the course and been fine, but it’s decidedly better to be a winery than a warehouse. So, we went berserk. We fueled the fires of value. We declassified barrels of stellar wine from our most respected vineyards (Shea and Gemini and Anderson and Temperance Hill) into this Provocateur blend. We fell in ... those burning rings of fire. The economy went down, down, down, but our quality grew higher. And our wallet burns, burns, burns ... those rings of fire ... those Provocateur rings of fire.

The Building of: Small-lot wild yeast fermentations in open-top stainless steel tanks. Limited pre-ferment maceration, followed by minimal, but targeted temperature and punchdown intervention. 100% barrel aged for 16 months in French oak, 9% new/13% one year year/78% two year or older. Racked and bottled, unfined and unfiltered in February of 2009.

Ageability: Drink now to five years and think about getting it some air in the first three.

Alcohol: 13%

pH: 3.51

Vineyards: A blend of seven vineyards, Temperance Hill (27 years), Momtazi (9 years), Eola Hills (9 years), Shea (10 years), Gemini (16 years), Black Walnut (4 years) and Anderson Family (17 years). That’s ridiculous!