Red Wines
Redtail
Redtail’s purpose is to honor each vintage’s disposition with unaltered purity of fruit and a complex but balanced harmony of composition. It is a tribute in name to the lords of the sky at Dovecote, our numerous resident families of beautiful red-tailed hawks.
As we farm, we carefully observe the palette of grapes grown on our vineyard. Every vintage is unique, and specific varietals shine brightly during different years. We then harvest and assemble a proprietary blend of the season’s most compelling red fruit, using vintage-unique ratios of Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, and/or Petite Sirah that are all grown on their own roots and fermented with vineyard-indigenous yeasts. The resulting wine uniquely communicates the distinct character of each vintage. Redtail is aged for 18 months in neutral French oak barrels and bottle-rested for a minimum of a year before release.
Mantle
When a bird of prey captures its quarry, it spreads its wings and surrounds it in preparation for the two entities to become one. This beautiful act is known as “mantling”. In this same spirit, Dovecote’s Mantle is born out of a unique process of sequential co-fermentation where two elements slowly fuse and become something beyond their individual parts via the alchemy of fermentation.
Roughly 80/20 Grenache/Syrah, Mantle is an elegant cuvée that possesses a distinctly silky mouthfeel, a dark and sultry core, and an exotically perfumed bouquet of fresh rain and crushed flowers. Its natural notes of wild anise and vanillin can often fool even the most experienced experts into believing new oak is involved, yet elevage is always 100% neutral.
Mantle is widely versatile with a range of cuisines, but just as enjoyable as a glass of happiness after a long day at work.
Estate Grenache
Dovecote Estate Grenache comes from our massal selection of own-rooted vines taken from some of the oldest Mission plantings in California. It is fermented with native yeast and aged in all neutral French oak barrels. This wine exudes a subtle limestone earthiness that elevates delicate aromatics of classic wild red berries and rose petals.
Medium bodied and similar in texture to a classic Southern Rhone wine, Dovecote Grenache offers excellent variability with a wide range of cuisine.
Estate Syrah
The grape that put our vineyard on the map, Dovecote’s flagship estate varietal is made to highlight the unique own-rooted Estrella River Syrah that was originally “borrowed” from the famed Chapoutier vineyard in Hermitage, France. Above all, it is what Thompson Vineyard has become renowned for over three decades. Dark, rich, and multidimensional, Dovecote Syrah delivers its power with a graceful touch.
Meticulously farmed from just a few of the sandiest, windblown, and nutrient-depleted northwesternmost rows of the cool climate Thompson Vineyard. Own-rooted Estrella River Syrah struggles to draw enough nourishment up through its deep roots to produce a large crop. Clusters and berries are tiny, almost pea-sized, with massive skin-to-pulp ratios providing intense structure and density.
Estate Petite Sirah
While it is always the darkest, inkiest, and densest wine we produce, Dovecote Estate Petite Sirah reflects its cool-climate terroir with a breathtakingly feminine grace and elegance in the glass, effortlessly balancing its inner power and intensity with an ethereal seductiveness.
This is a wine born for special occasions that can also elevate a casual meal into a memorable experience.
Several decades ago an Italian-American and pioneering Central Coast farmer named Joe Carrari planted Petite Sirah in the Los Alamos Valley to use in his original field blends. His Petite Sirah responded extraordinarily to the cool-climate area, trading its typical warm-region jammy simplicity for a lush floral bouquet and bewitching complexity that was soon recognized by other local vintners. In 1990 cuttings were acquired from Joe to be planted as part of the Thompson Vineyard, pushed naked into the soil to grow on their own rootstock.
While the Los Alamos legend Mr. Carrari is no longer with us, we are honored to carry forward the legacy of his eponymous “Carrari Clone” Petite Sirah in both our vines and glasses.
Noumenon
A noumenon is an object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception – the “thing-in-itself”. It is not a result of observation, sense, or perception.
Dovecote’s flagship wine adheres to this philosophy of “that which is” and is only made from fruit that is able to become wine with no intervention: 100% native yeast from the vineyard, spontaneous fermentation, and a perfect balance of ripeness and acidity. It is the purest expression of the land from which it comes.
Noumenon is a select blend of the most unique, expressive, and age-worthy Syrah barrels in our winery. It is only released when a vintage yields fruit that produces a subset of outstanding barrels that justify this separately bottled wine.
