The Cliff Notes: A robust red that busts the vintage like a voluminous balloon. Dark cherry, resinous spice, sweet barnyard and graham rise off the top. Deep blueberry flavors with red berry highlights, meat and tobacco occupy the palate. It’s sweet, beautiful, ripe and floral, with persistence, on good mineral acidity and rounded medium-plus tannins.

The Story: Once again Shea Vineyard is the booming bass note out of the cellar. In an otherwise cooler year this warm and low-elevation site came through, as always, delivering its classic one-two punch of ripe and sweet-flavored fruit. Robust and red, the wine is like touring a feast whilst hanging onto the robe of Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Past.

Cases Produced: 96

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

Ageability: Decant it 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: 3.61

Vineyards: At Shea Vineyards ours is a three-acre, mid-slope east block of nine-year-old Dijon clone 777 Pinot noir. The site is warm and early, delivering fruit of optimal ripeness and opulence in bottle. These are the four best barrels.