Fife Max Cuvée, Napa Valley 2001

Fife Max Cuvée, Napa Valley 2001
Region: Napa Valley
Winery: Fife
Variety: Blend (Red)
Rating:

Flavor to the Max Our Max Cuvée is about density of texture and of flavor. The wine was inspired by the concentrated syrah based wines of the Northern Rhône, but it is distinctly Californian in style. This unique red wine blend is made principally from old-vine syrah, petite syrah, and zinfandel grown in contiguous blocks in our vineyard on the alluvial benchland between Calistoga and St. Helena. On the Palate The nearly opaque deep black-purple color portends richness and this wine has it. Beautiful, refined black cherry and licorice flavors dominate the wine’s beginning and get more luscious on the end. MAX has always been the kind of wine that seems to want to make a statement. The statement here is not raw power, but power suffused through elegance. The Growing Season The 2001 season was nearly ideal. We had good winter rains that ended in early spring. Flowering was about normal and gave a good start to the season. The most significant quality factor was a long, cool, and unusually even ripening season. This promoted small berries and long hang-time, which allowed the fruit to develop richness and concentration. In September the weather warmed up a bit and assured full and complete ripeness of most varieties. The Gentle Art of Winemaking Our winemaking philosophy is simple—obtain grapes with personality, handle them minimally, then focus on blending to bring out nuance and character in the wine. We depend on the vineyard to create the fruit, the density and the concentration. In the winemaking we seek to assure balance, elegance, texture and length of flavor.

Posted by thewinery on January 2nd, 2009 at 10:39pm | report comment