Porter Family Vineyards Newsletter

Porter Family Vineyards Inaugural Release—October 4th, 2008

After three years of dust and hard work, our efforts are finally rewarded! Our 2005 wines are in bottle, and ready to be enjoyed. The winery cave is finished and is housing our 2006 and 2007 wines in barrel. This fall we will be able to ferment our first harvest in the cave! The 2008 vintage will truly be an “estate” vintage – grown, fermented, aged, and bottled on our vineyard. Next year we hope to develop a new wine to join our Cabernet and Syrah, “Sandpiper Red”, in honor of the fossilized bird tracks we found while digging the cave. This wine will be a unique and flavorful blend from estate fruit – each vintage will be something different and exciting, and will be a limited release. (Rumor has it that a white wine may also join the portfolio, but this has yet to be substantiated.)

New vines have been planted – we now not only have Syrah, Merlot, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, but are eagerly nurturing the young Cabernet Franc and Malbec vines on the hilltop as they grow through their second season (With the exception of Syrah, these varietals are the “Bordeaux Five”, the five main varietals found in the Bordeaux region in France). Frost during budbreak damaged some of the vines earlier this spring, but they have recovered and we are looking forward to this year’s harvest.

On October 4th, we will be offering our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2005 Syrah for purchase – this is our first release of wine and we’re incredibly excited! These wines have been carefully handcrafted in small lots by our winemaker, Ken Bernards, and showcase some of Napa Valley's most unique fruit:

2005 Cabernet Sauvignon – Exotic Coombsville hillside terroir notes of violet, cedar, Thai basil, and baking spices blanket a dense, rich core of fruit flavors – blackberry, deep plum, black currant – with a touch of vanilla bean and dark cocoa; deep, chewy tannins provide a voluptuous matrix. 250 cases.

2005 Syrah – Blackberry, rosewater, cinnamon bark, orange zest, and sage aromas open, then crescendo to a main theme of cassis, blackberry, chocolate, black tea, and cherry, with velvety, luxurious, fine-grained tannins weaving counterpoint. 40 cases.

Please visit our website to pre-order this release offering and sign up for our regular mailing list. Because of the very small production of these wines, we are limiting orders to three bottles of each varietal. For future releases, we will be offering our wines to our mailing list customers first in a special pre-release offer.

www.PorterFamilyVineyards.com

Best regards,
The Porter Family
Tim Porter, Bev and Tom Porter, Heather and Steven Wolfe, Alex, CharLee, and Madison