The best red wine I ever made

I originally thought might be unremarkable

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,” say the philosophers.

I am often asked, “Out of all the wine you make, what is your favorite?” I’ve always dodged the question, like one does when asked, “Who is your favorite of your children?” How could you possibly pick either?

But that might be changing. Not with my children, of course. But yes, I think I’ll go on record right now with at least red wine (I’m still in the honeymoon stage with my Vermentino, a truly titillating Italian white). But with red wine, my 2022 Aerie Cabernet Sauvignon feels like it deserves that distinction. Yet this is a very new development, coming more than three years after that harvest was just a twinkle in my eye. And for the record—it was a very rough pregnancy!

Remember the devastating “heat dome” of early September 2022, followed by that major rain event so audaciously (yet accurately) named an “atmospheric river?” It threw into chaos the harvest season that year, and tested the mettle of a young (well, actually old, but definitely young in experience) winemaker. I was so shaken I wrote about it here, then here, then here, and then here, and then even again here.

If I were to be completely honest, after that nearly two-year Herculean effort to rescue my 2022 vintage I thought my Aerie Cabernet Sauvignon was destined to be commonplace. My other 2022 wines aside—which had, surprisingly and amazingly, risen from the ashes like wine-colored phoenices bedecked in golden medals and high point scores—my Cabernet Sauvignon remained aloof, too tight to express promising aroma and taste, too shy to hint at anything memorable in mouthfeel and/or complexity, and certainly too common to catch the attention of any Cab aficionado.

Under the jagged blue skies of a devastating heat dome, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes arrive at my winery in 2022 from a mountaintop vineyard just east of Sonoma (above), while friends help pick another Cab vineyard on the Valley floor. These would eventually be blended together to become arguably the best wine I have ever made.

In the beginning I’d actually planned on making two Cabs, two barrels from a young mountaintop vineyard east of Sonoma and two barrels from an older vineyard on the Valley floor just north of Sonoma. But both lots seemed to have been compromised by the extreme weather conditions and in the end I was forced to blend them together in the hopes of mitigating feared shortcomings, and on the slim possibility of activating that rare but real wine equation 1 + 1 = 3, or 4, or even 5. It can happen.

But through most of élevage (barrel aging) not much did happen. The wine remained clean and fresh, and surprisingly balanced, but basically introverted and lacking the typicity (the characteristics of a grape variety and the region where it's grown) usually associated with Cabernet Sauvignon.

After 18 months in the barrel I bottled it. What else was I to do? I’d spent more money on those valley floor grapes than I’d ever spent before on fruit, and that was only because I’d shared a sensational bottle of wine with the vineyard owner who claimed it had been made from his grapes. But I had become a little paranoid, conspiracy thoughts hovering at the edges as I tried to suss out why my wine didn’t taste anything like his. Why it didn’t, well, taste like anything.

Once in the bottle I squirreled it away into storage, resolved not to think about it for a year or more, whichever might mercifully come later. I was disappointed and rattled by the perceived loss of investment. But hey, every wine you make can’t be a masterpiece.

Fast forward to October 2024. I entered my 2022 vintage wines in the late season Harvest Fair competition in hopes of garnering a little advance attention. Two of my reds won Double-Gold Medals and one was also took home a Best in Class. And somehow my “unillustrious” Cabernet Sauvignon won a Gold Medal of its own.

Wait. What?!

Suspecting a judging anomaly or maybe a math error, I started including it in both private and commercial tastings in the spring of 2025 to gauge reaction. And suddenly there was a new kid in town. Folks were smitten and in the month of May alone we sold nearly a hundred bottles. Then just a few weeks ago we got word that it had won a Double-Gold Medal and 94-points in the OCFair Commercial Wine Competition, the largest competition of California Wines!

So what happened?

Well, wine happened, for one thing. And patience won out in the long run. But while those two, mutually inclusive forces collaborated, I wrestled a heat dome that had vineyard sugars rising 1°Brix per day (a normal rate is more like 1°Brix per week) resulting in very high alcohol, and acid crashing and pH rising while physiological ripening ground to a halt. Then the rains came and the rot and the mildew ensued. When to pick? When to pick? When to pick?

When we finally did pick the fermentations were tyachacardic, too fast, too slow. I didn’t water down (honestly?—I didn’t understand the process) so blending became critical. So did acid adds and SO2 management and MLF completion and lees trickery and racking, and VA monitoring, and supplemental oak extraction. The list goes on and on and every winemaker has memorized the script. The good ones can ad lib.

But the true magic with wine. The reality that humbles and sometimes shakes you to the core is that it becomes itself with or without you. Outside stresses play a huge role, often debilitating, but not always. Sometime they are the catalyst for greatness. Once in the barrel, and even more so in the bottle, the wine emerges, spurred on by the complex chemical processes of integration and polymerization and encouraged by micro-oxidation. I won’t pretend to understand it, most chemists still don’t. But true miracles can happen and an ugly duckling like my 2022 Aerie Cabernet Sauvignon can sometimes morph into a stately swan.

As it has.

Suddenly there exists the powerful nose that is Cabernet Sauvignon and the long drawn out flavor that favors the varietal. Only mine is bright and fruit forward, void of the singular dimension and library stuffiness of Napa, yet richly complex with a long, smooth finish. It’s as if the two wines that were blended together finally woke up from their sleep, discovered their remarkably attractive bedmates, made love, and became one.

Please go to tinyvineyards.com and try it. Buy enough to time travel with it for a while. I promise you will become infatuated!