2010 Chuy Chard ReserveNelligan Road Ranch
This wine is so special. I have come to respect the 2010 that we bottled a year ago more and more each time that I open it. I now think that it is one of the very best wines I have ever made. This reserve is based on the same wine, but aged for an additional year in stainless steel. We had a sense when we bottled the wine one year ago that we might have something very special and powerful on our hands, so we decided to experiment with a technique my friend John Kongsgaard observed in Burgundy. Winemakers there will sometimes age wine in concrete tanks after the wine has spent time in oak barrels—giving the wine both reductive and oxidative aging. It is a kind of noble imprisonment. We made just 15 gallons and are bottling this wine only in large format.