Finally — Wine! (2002)
A couple years after Le Cadeau had been on the market, a journalist asked me about the most exciting wine that I had ever tried; I pondered a minute and replied, “Barrel samples of our 2001 wine!” (Which was ultimately blended into another wine; 2002 was the first Le Cadeau vintage).
When we planted our property it was impossible to project an outcome because there were no other nearby vineyards as reference points. I knew that grapes liked rocks (and we had plenty of those!), and I knew that the climate was comparable to other sites (despite our relatively high 700’ elevation). But ultimately, there’s only one way to know what the wine will be like, and that’s to make it and taste it. In this regard, the first taste of your own wine is like no other!
After all the time, effort, and expense that went into developing our vineyard site, it was both exciting and reassuring to discover that the wine had “character”. Indeed, after my first taste of our wine I was reasonably confident that Black Hole Vineyard was a special site – the aromatics were fresh, but intense; the fruit flavors were pure and deep; and there were hints of Asian spices mingled with an earthiness that is often not found in young wines. To this day, those core characteristics remain, regardless of the vintage or the winemaking.
In 2002 we had a wonderful growing season that resulted in beautiful fruit. The 2002 Le Cadeau Pinot Noir was bottled in January of 2004, and released in June of 2005—eight years and four months after we purchased the property. Confident that the vineyard would produce excellent wines, later that year we planted an additional 4-acres of Pinot Noir – Dijon clones #114 and #115—bringing the total vineyard size to 10-acres.