2016 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

Seavey’s 2016 Founders Reserve is an energetic age-worthy cabernet. The Wine showcases rich aromas of blackberry, black currant, and a touch of boysenberry intertwined with notes of leather and cassis. Expressing the beauty and complexity of our terraced vines, this wine salutes your senses yet offers your palate a smooth texture and elegant tannins. Opulent, youthful, and seductively layered, this wine requires a patience that will be rewarded.

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

Seavey’s 26th vintage of single-vineyard estate Cabernet Sauvignon comes from grapes grown on steep hillside blocks which we have been farming for 36 years. The 2016 growing season was marked by ideal weather and rains that ended a historic three-year drought. It started off warm but July and August were mild, resulting in a long growing season with lots of hang-time allowing the grapes to progress to perfect ripeness.

Production Notes

Seavey separately harvests, vinifies and ages each vineyard block of our grapes. Our winemaking follows classic Bordeaux methods with whole-berry fermentation. In the cool of the early morning harvest, grapes from our 2016 harvest were promptly de-stemmed and the uncrushed berries were gently transferred into fermentation tanks. In order to carefully manage the tannins and resulting wine texture, the grapes were neither crushed nor run through a pump. Following fermentation, the wine was aged in French oak barrels (70% new) for 20 months before bottling in June 2018.