Eighty Four Wines Napa Valley Malbec 2014

            Doug Shafer & Elias Fernandez are the well-known winemaking team behind Shafer Vineyars who produce some of Napa Valley's best wines including the legendary Hillside Select.  Their new small-production label, Eighty Four, represents the year they started making wine together. The first few years were challenging – experimenting, working long hours, learning from mistakes, pushing to make the best wines they could. This wine represents two friends going full circle – making wine together, trying new things, doing what they love. That's the spirit they are trying to recapture in their new label.  The Malbec is a stunner but extremely limited. Malbec is a relative newcomer to Napa Valley and we have loved the challenge of taking on something new. With this latest vintage we are pleased with the wine’s deep color, lifted aromas, and vibrant flavors. We give it 20 months in 75% new oak to allow it to take on a bit of heft and richness and to speak purely of its varietal character, a generous mix of black and red fruit. Winemaker Doug Shafer & Elias Fernandez Notes: Petite Sirah has a long history in Napa Valley. We first became acquainted with it in the 1970s as a homemade wine that local grape growers made and stored in their barns and basements. The wine can be a burly wall-of-flavor unless tamed to allow its subtler, delicious dimensions and inherent elegance emerge. Toward that end we aged this wine for nearly four years in new French oak and another year in bottle prior to its release.

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