I Brand and Family Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon Bates Ranch Vineyard 2022 22BDX blended from organically farmed old-vine

blended from organically farmed old-vine sites across Northern California

From the Rheingau's steepest and most storied vineyard site—Berg Schlossberg rises at extreme gradients—85 degrees

a dusting of garrigue

sans alcohol

so cellar it for something special

I Brand and Family Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon Bates Ranch Vineyard 2022 22BDX blended from organically farmed old-vineBates Ranch sits at the far southern tip of the Santa Cruz Mountains, near Mount Madonna, planted in the early 1970s and dry farmed on a steep slope well above a thousand feet. It's a historic Cabernet site whose fruit went into some of the region's benchmark bottlings decades ago, and Ian Brand treats it with the seriousness it deserves. This is emphatically not valley floor Cabernet: no plush, no chocolate, no weight for weight's sake. Instead you