2017 Vespidae WV Pinot

If deep red Hibiscus were a flavor

A Story: Vespidae (ves-puh-day): Latin name of the family of wasp trying to kill me.

The Cliff Notes: The color is high tone garnet. The nose is super effusive cherry, hibiscus, grilled meat, tan spice and cracked pepper. The flavors are massive and present as a cherry and peach pie with a one-minute too brown crust. The structure is quietly lurking, but unobtrusive. Ultimately it’s a powerful mouthful that begs the question drinkable, eatable or slurpable? Get a fork or, perhaps, a soup spoon. 2022 update: Aromatically this wine presents as heady cherry, savory bouillon, yeast extract, anise and bouquet garni. The palate follows with highly drinkable cherry, peach and coffee. It finishes ripe, long and easy on gentle tannins.

The Vintage: The 2017 growing year was reasonably warm, though not really hot, with a record number of days in the 90s, and very few 100s. The result was easy to obtain ripeness with good reward on the acid front for those who pulled in the reins and made good/relatively early picking decisions. Elegance on good power would be the words.

The Building of: Six- to eight-barrel-lot, wild-yeast fermentations in stainless steel, 100% barrel aged for 17 months: 27% new, 16% one year, 16% two year, 41% three year or older. Bottled unfined and unfiltered in March 2019.

Ageability: We absolutely recommend that you consider decanting to get it some air within its first three years. Maybe cool it just a couple degrees as well. This wine should easily climb in complexity beyond ten years.

Vineyards: This is our flagship bottling representing two great vineyards. The typicity of our St. Dolores Estate (9 years) is that it presents as two sides of a not-often-seen coin, both structured and juicy. Temperance Hill (38 years) saunters in with hard-to-deny old-vine complexity and crazy beautiful acid.

— Jim Prosser, owner/winemaker