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Wine Description
The Story
Out of the three Dana Estate owned vineyards, the Lotus vineyard located on St. Helena hillsides, stands at 1200 feet above sea level with a beautiful panoramic view of the Napa Valley floor.
This steep hillside vineyard is spread over the rocky, low-yielding soils with Western exposure. Thanks to the influence of the afternoon sun, the wines shows ripe and rich fruitiness while the three to twelve inches, fractured grey bedrock soil generates the marked mineral structure to the wine.
“This is incredibly dry, well-drained soil that has very low water holding capacity and in dry, warm vintages it reflects outstanding a level of grape ripeness,” Vawter sums up.
Wine Information
“I consider the vintage 2009 was the start of a three year cooling cycle (2009, 2010, 2011) that ended with the 2012 vintage. If I look at the big picture of the decade I see warming each year from 2006, 2007 and then 2008. 2009 then started a cooling cycle where the vintages were progressively cooler and wetter. Out of these vintages the 2011 was the coolest and wettest. I am pleased to see the vintage 2012 is breaking this cycle.”
“The budbreaks were almost 15 days later than the previous warmer vintages. The summer was generally cool with only two heat spikes above 100 degrees, one in June and one in July. Fruit matured slowly and relatively evenly, with wonderful purity. This is one of the reasons why Dana Estates Cabernets from the 2009 vintage show such finesse and approachability at a young age. However, the near perfect growing season ended suddenly with unseasonably powerful rain in early October. With rare exception, the fruit that came in after the rain was declassified. Fortunately, the fruit that came in before this rain was of the highest quality.”
Cameron Vawter, Winemaker – Dana Estates: