A cool season punctuated by a blistering heat wave and October rains made 2010 a tough year for the Bordeaux varieties on Jonata’s Ballard Canyon estate. The team battled both shriveling and underripe fruit, and ended up...
A cool season punctuated by a blistering heat wave and October rains made 2010 a tough year for the Bordeaux varieties on Jonata’s Ballard Canyon estate. The team battled both shriveling and underripe fruit, and ended up bringing in their cabernet sauvignon, franc, petit verdot and merlot on a single day between two rainstorms, cherry picking the healthiest clusters and making a single co-ferment. The franc shows up here as herbal nuance and savory tobacco tones, while petit verdot is evident in the wine’s cracked black peppercorn grip. But the wine is mostly about Jonata, showing the dark meatiness of grapes grown on the estate’s sandy hillside soils. In this case, seen through the lens of a cool year, the expression is as restrained as it is muscular—the tannins fine and resolute, sculpted to a graphite clarity. Already complex, this is a fragrant and deeply mineral wine for the long haul.