Cartogrape.com
Terroir based wine discovery.
Mount George | Cabernet Sauvignon
I scored every Cabernet site in Napa Valley. Most of them sit in a tight little band — the valley is as consistent as its reputation says. The bottom is where it gets interesting. A few sites are far enough below the rest that the words on the label stop telling you much. Mount George is up in the hills east of the city, off the valley floor, and it lands well clear of the pack. All estate fruit, and they describe it dark — plum, black cherry, blackberry, a touch of vanilla, tannins that don't get in the way.
Peony Lane | Cabernet Sauvignon
The highest vineyard in America isn't in California, and it isn't in Washington. It's in Colorado — Paonia, on the western slope, and Peony Lane is near the top of it. Altitude alone doesn't do it. There's another Colorado AVA almost as high that my numbers don't like at all. West Elks has the rest of the package: thin air, nights that fall off a cliff, a dry run through ripening. Peony Lane call it "vibrant, untamed" — red cherry, cassis, blueberry, with real lift. About what that much sun and that little heat should give you.
Quinta da Romaneira | Syrah
Nowhere is planted on ground this steep. I ranked every region by slope and the Douro isn't close to the rest of them. It's why the place is terraced instead of planted, and why one block behaves nothing like the block a hundred metres over. Malhadal is one of those blocks, bottled on its own. Romaneira call it "one small specific parcel within the property." Which is more or less the reason I built this thing.
