Westbrook Wine Farm

New from Westbrook Wine Farm in O’Neals is a limited production “Rosato” wine with a sprightly attitude and bright magenta hue. It is crafted from the free run juice of hand selected bunches of Valdiguie grapes grown entirely in Madera County. Slow barrel fermentation and a unique Rhone yeast isolate have beveled any sharp, youthful edges. The atypical vinification methods and our proprietary blend allow us to offer this fresh, pleasingly complex and totally dry white wine alternative to the serious wine lover.

ODE to a FAIT ACCOMPLI

My daughter came down for the annual Oscar party with 9 bottles of her favorites from Russian River and points east!!. Saturday, I uncorked THE BOTTLE. Karen was impressed with the use of the warm water and knife held at 45 degrees to expose the cork... Anyway, a very long story reduced to its essences, your wine was amazing at the first sampling. An hour later, even more so. The next day, the wine had relaxed and the flavor and after taste lingered as a delicate balance to be savored and enhance the evening with friends and family.

Thank you so much, it was worth the wait.

Brent

Well, the Red Sox pulled off a big one last night. Bruce, being a true Boston sports fan, was biting his nails and waiting for the Colorado Rockies to spoil the hope of a World Series sweep, but they just went out with a whimper. I knew we would be watching grown men bathing each other in Champagne, so I decided that the occasion required something more. As the 9th inning began I held the wax in the palm of my hand, as instructed, careful not to warm the bottle. With the first out in the bottom of the 9th, I unfolded the blade of the opener. As the young pitcher jumped into the air in celebration of his first championship, I carefully cut the wax on a 2004 Fait Accompli. Bruce, Amy, and I toasted the World Champion Red Sox with the best beverage in the house.

It was funny how quickly our attention turned from the baseball celebration to what can only be described as surrender to the taste of your wonderful wine on our tongues. Let others celebrate with bubbly white wine, we prefer to mark any grand occasion with Fait Accompli.

Ray and Tammy, thank you for pursuing your passion. You have made the world a better place.

Laura

SINGLE VINEYARD COLLECTION

These wines are made from hand-sorted bunches, grown by other farmers who we know to have a passion, parallel to our own, for growing fruit of intensity and quality.

Petite Sirah

Highly extracted and unmitigated from John Simpson's own-rooted vines in Madera. Naturally proud tannins and alcohol reminiscent of the bold 1960s creations of young doctors Bennion and Bruce. A more floral than fruit forward red wine. Pairs best with sage rubbed, flame charred venison.

Lodi Cabernet Cabernet Sauvignon
Lodi, Peterson Family Vineyard

... this old head-trained and spur-pruned vineyard in the Lodi / Woodbridge area provides great fruit with which to work.

Dark cherries, dark roses, chocolate, truffles, cedar and Cabernet Sauvignon fruit.

100% Cabernet Sauvignon • Unfined, Unfiltered

Ray and Tammy,

Hope both are well. I can report that we (Maureen, who works for me, and I) were unable to keep our hands off of your Peterson Cab, and so opened a bottle Wed. after you dropped it off - sorry I missed you, by the way. Initially, we couldn't place the thing - extreme ripeness and obvious density, along with a kind of awkward disjointedness were the first impressions. Consider. Close bottle. Yesterday, I returned to the 80%-full bottle that spent the night in a 55-degree vinotemp, to find something still dense and ripe, but now supple and smooth in texture, with slightly charred black fruit notes, still very dense but terrifically balanced with a new structure, and now enlived particularly by a lovely background of vanillins that had not been expressed the first day. The wine really came into focus and took shape overnight. It reminded me very strongly (and this is one of the reasons I'm writing this) of a number of the best wines I've tasted from the French Southwest, especially those wonderful plummy, roasty Madirans that contain some Cab and Cab Franc, but are principally based on Tannat. Yours was certainly not as rough or tannic as their regular bottlings, this wine reminds me of certain of those vinters' prestige cuvees: muscled, but with a kind of emergent refinement.

Well, I don't drink those wines here, so tasting yours caused me for the first time in a while to think of certain dinner parties we used to have, especially those for which my Toulousian roommate would cook something from home, and we would buy those gutsy wines from her region to go with. Those were great evenings.

I can't wait to see what the last half of the bottle will taste like today.

All the best to you both,

Mark.

I had a 2005 Peterson cab last night and it was just fabulous. So rich and concentrated. I decanted because it is so huge and young and tannic. Ageworthy is an understatement. I probably drank ¾ of the bottle myself. My poor mother barely got a taste. I had a Matanzas Creek cab a couple nights earlier ($35 at the winery) and it was frighteningly inferior to your Peterson. I still have half that bottle in the frig. I can't bear to drink it after the Peterson.

Richard, Scotts Valley, CA

Lodi Cabernet Cabernet Sauvignon
Clone 4 Sturm Gardner Vineyard
Mariposa County

Our clients now refer to it as "C-4" for its explosive mineral, herbal and forest floor expressions. Fashioned from hand selected bunches from one acre of the ever shy old clone four grown at 3,000 feet in elevation in the mountains of Mariposa.

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