The vintage of 2012 was a large vintage of excellent quality fruit—in fact, it was one of the largest vintages in recent memory. From the moment we crushed the fruit, we were amazed at the great color and intense flavors from the fermenting wine. As is our tradition, we hand-sorted the fruit to ensure the quality of the clusters before crushing the grapes to tank. We used our special custom-made gridded tanks to ferment, allowing us to submerge the cap of grape skins beneath the surface of the fermenting wine, extracting color, body, and complexity from the grapes without extracting drying tannins found in the seeds. The result are intense and complex wines that also feel very velvety and round on the tongue rather than harsh or tannic. All of the wines were fermented using only the natural yeast population on the grapes—our trademark and tradition at Dashe Cellars—and the resulting wine shows off the terroir of the vineyards beautifully. The wine was aged for 10 months in a older French oak barrels, including our 900 gallon French oak casks that allow us to gain the softness of oak aging without adding excessive oak flavors in the wine. All barrels were at least one year old and as old as seven years, so as to reduce the effect of oak on the fruit. In our blending trials, we added about 6% of Petite Sirah, for structure and aging potential.