The 2021 Lady of the Dead offers berries and spices in spades, with boysenberry, raspberry, and cranberry over allspice, cinnamon, and toasted oak. Already very open and easy to get to know, this wine has a juicy softness to it while packing a punch of concentrated fruit fullness. It builds layers of character in the glass, revealing more nuance, while never losing its focus on the fun of ripe dark fruit.
Intense sweet dark fruits with brooding aromas of blueberries, cocoa, leather and fine antique wooden furniture, and then hints of lifted maple in the foreground are later complemented by black olive. The wine hits the palate with sweet fruits of raspberry turning to blackberry and the structure unfolds with a building finish that portends a long future of graceful aging.
The 2020 LADY OF THE DEAD features a dark fruit core of bramble berries, Morello cherry, candied fruits, vanilla, cedar, allspice and tilled earth along with notes of leather.
The 2020 BLOCK FIVE announces itself from the glass with vibrant dark fruit, anise, black fig, olive, saddle leather, and hints of slate rock, cement and toasted oak.
The initial aromas of the 2021 PRADO are brooding with floral dark fruits of mulberries, plum, and notes of sandalwood—pure and directed with nice deep bass tones. Even with all the dark fruits, the palate is bright, juicy, and tangy, dancing with a nice interplay of tannin and acid to give structure and liveliness wrapped up with long, dense concentrated fruits but still genteel with balance and grace.
The 2021 SMD flows with black cherry, dried plum, fig, juicy black currant and cassis with pencil shavings, earth and spice before a hint of eucalyptus. With loganberry leading off, the palate also exhibits spice and mineral laden character with toast and herbed fruits and dried fruits with tobacco leaf and a note of balsamic on structured, jazzy and enlivening tannins.