Winemaker: Thomas Rivers brown

The final rounding out of the 2021 wines in barrel was especially important for the Last Rites Cemetery Vineyard bottling. This site is always a bit of a black hole in fermenter and the goal is to find some generosity in the finished blend somewhere during elevage. Vine age here has helped as well, the wine feels more dense and saturated than the equally structured 2018 version. Being the second consecutive drought year could have been a struggle for a site as well drained as Cemetery, but our experience with the vineyard helped us navigate that challenge and hang our blocks out until late September. This insured the abundant tannin of the vintage would be ripe enough to help flesh out the finish instead of clipping it. Dark notes dominate the fruit and savory elements with black cherry and blackberries leading into damp earth, fresh tobacco leaf, black olives and iron soil notes providing a multi-dimensional, layered texture. The tannins are abundant but ripe so they mark both the incredible nature of the vintage and the site. There is a little hint of blood orange and sous bois that adds some lightness to the very end of the palate adding one more note of complexity to what is already a very dynamic wine.