2012 Ark Cabernet Sauvignon 6LArk

WINEMAKER NOTES:

All Hundred Acre wines are made by sorting the fruit berry by berry, fermenting in small French oak fermenters, and long aging in the finest barriques. The secret to Hundred Acre is no compromise and no detail overlooked, ever.

VINEYARD NOTES:

The single estate vineyard ARK is located just outside St. Helena, California, at the base of Howell Mountain. It was originally planted in the 1880’s, but was sadly lost to Prohibition. It took us five years to rebuild; she is our pride and joy. 

The ARK is comprised of nine different blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon, planted meter by meter in nine different volcanic soil strata. The vineyard stretches through a sixty million year time sequence; three ancient beach fronts, a prehistoric weapons quarry, and spans a 180 degree arc of the sun over its half-mile length.

Hot afternoon sun known to damage aromatics in the fruit (on the hottest days), is blocked by the shade of Glass Mountain (named for the rare obsidian rock found in the soil and used for ancient weapons such as arrowheads) which rises to the western side of the ARK.

As with all of our vineyards, we pick only when the fruit is perfectly ripe; this doesn’t always happen at once. It is common for us to make multiple passes through the vineyard, picking different clusters from the same vines as they reach perfect maturity. This attention to detail is critical to making a wine the caliber of Hundred Acre.

TASTING NOTES:

By Robert Parker: “A perfect wine is the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Arc Vineyard from Woodbridge’s property on Howell Mountain. This is an amazingly deep, rich, blueberry, blackberry and mulberry scented and flavored wine with skyscraper-like texture, remarkable intensity, again great, great purity, and the new oak completely concealed by the lavish and extravagant amounts of fruit. One hundred percent Cabernet Sauvignon, as are all these wines, the Ark Vineyard is certainly another blockbuster wine with no hard edges that comes across like a flawlessly constructed dress from an haute couture house in Paris. It should drink well for 25-30 years as well.”

COOPERAGE:

Hundred Acre wines are aged for 24 to 30 months in the finest center of France oak barrique. The stave wood is hand-selected for ultra-tight grain, then air dried for three years before being made into barrels.