2014 Blackbird Vineyards Arise Red Blend Napa Valley 750 ml

Parker’s “Most Illustrious” Winemaker’s Prized Napa Terroir

Blackbird Vineyards winemaker Aaron Pott worked with Michel Rolland and John Kongsgaard — before joining superstar Saint-Émilion estates Château Troplong Mondot Premier Grand Cru Classé and Château La Tour Figeac, little wonder Robert Parker describes him “in the top hierarchy of Napa Valley’s most illustrious winemaking consultants.”  In fact, Parker praises all of Pott’s Blackbird Vineyard offerings, which he says “reveal beautiful balance, suppleness, and intensity.”   The 2014 “Arise” Proprietary Red Wine embodies all that Food & Wine “Winemaker of the Year” Pott learned from the best, a super-rich and voluptuous wine crafted from some of Napa’s most illustrious vineyards including Hudson and Stagecoach.  Already earning 92 points from Wine Enthusiast and 93 points from Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine, which called it “exceptionally well-balanced,” this is a collector’s item, a sleekly contoured, darkly concentrated beauty. Only 45 cases to go around from Wine Spectator’s 2014 “dream vintage,” and they’ll go fast.

Pott hand-picks from Napa’s most elite sites for this sumptuous, classic blend. Fruit hails from Hudson Vineyard (beloved by Kongsgaard, Kistler, and David Ramey), Stagecoach (home to coveted volcanic soils that have seduced Caymus and Duckhorn), Crocker & Starr (cultivated continuously since the 1870s), and Blackbird’s estate vineyard in the Oak Knoll District, renowned for its cool nights and clay-gravel soils, where Merlot flourishes.

2014 — called a “dream vintage” by Spectator — gave birth to bunches so prodigious in size and pristine in quality that many winemakers nearly considered folding up the sorting table. A warm, dry winter and spring led to early bud break and flowering went off without a hitch under perfect conditions. Vines basked under bright sunny rays and powder-blue skies, even as temperatures remained mild. When the call to harvest came, sugars were sky-high while acids were firm and tannins as sturdy as the fabulously age-worthy 2013s. A tremendous bottling from one of Napa’s sharpest talents.