2015 Dancing Hares Vineyard Red

Dancing Hares Vineyard is an artisanal, luxury wine enterprise started in the late 1990s by Bob Cook, a technology entrepreneur, and his wife Paul Brooks, also a technology executive. The couple purchased a 31-acre hillside estate below Howell Mountain and hired top talent to tend to the five acres of vineyards and the winemaking. Andy Erickson, whose resume includes winemaking at Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Ovid and numerous other prestigious Napa estates, is winemaker. French winemaking consultant Michel Rolland is also involved. Dancing Hares makes a limited quantity of Cabernet Sauvignon-based blends. The first release was the 2004 vintage, and the wines have received excellent reviews. The wines are generally available only through the estate’s mailing list.

Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay,