2015 Founders’ Reserve

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“The Founders’ Reserve provides our loyal customers with a peek behind the curtain at Seavey. The opportunity to honor Bill and Mary is the impetus each year to create this very small reserve cuvée made from special wine lots that, because of their small size, are known only to us in-house.” – Jim Duane, Winemaker 

Tasting Notes

Rich, concentrated and full of personality, the 2015 Founders’ Reserve reveals the intense power of this memorably scarce vintage. Bright red fruit, cherry cola and pomegranate lead the plush, fruit-forward aromatics of this wine, while in the mouth it is surprisingly multilayered and laced with intriguing earthiness and spice flavors. The wine finishes with velvety, soft tannins infusing it with a focused elegance in no small part attributable to the extra year spent in barrel. The end result–with only 49 cases produced–is a true winemaking labor of love and a creative homage to the 2015 vintage that expresses the spirited tenacity of Seavey’s oldest Cabernet vines.

A handcrafted estate reserve wine, the Founders’ Reserve is a tribute to Seavey’s founders, William and Mary Seavey, honoring their steadfast love of the land and their dedication to creating masterful wines with a sense of place. Taste the essence of our steep hillside vineyards, the history of our land, and the passion of our family for making age-worthy Cabernets.

Vineyard Notes

The 2015 growing season was marked by generally warm weather, limited rainfall, and an early harvest. Reminiscent of Napa’s famous 2010 vintage, the resulting harvest was much smaller than average, yielding very concentrated wines with lots of personality. The Founders’ Reserve was sourced from two of the oldest Cabernet blocks on the estate, Blocks 3 and 10. Planted in 1993, Block 3 is situated on a clay-rich plateau known for producing grapes with deep and layered power. Block 10, planted five years later, occupies a gentle south-facing slope that often surprises us with its aromatic fruit and elegant tannins.

Production Notes

The components for this highly-limited wine were sourced from vineyard blocks that are home to the oldest Cabernet vines at Seavey Vineyard, now in their third decade. Because of sharply reduced yields (half of usual amounts), it wasn’t clear it would even be possible to make a 2015 Founders’ Reserve. But winemaker Jim Duane worked painstakingly with just a few special lots, none of which even filled a barrel, to achieve a wine loaded with personality and concentrated layers. The resulting wine was barrel-aged for 32 months, the first vintage of Seavey’s Founders’ Reserve to receive an extra year of barrel aging.