This is the second release of last year’s incredibly successful Red Table Wine. This wine requires a little explanation. Dianna and I worked in retail for many years and we saw the large number of very good, reasonably priced wines of character coming from the south of France. It was frustrating that very few similarly priced, character filled wines were being produced in California. Of course, over the last few years an entire category of lower-priced negotiant wines have emerged. These are wines that are serviceable but lack the expression of flavors that emerge from boutique wineries. Accordingly, over the last couple of vintages we have experimented with producing this type of richly flavored, red table wine and have come up with a rather unique method of doing so.

We begin by bleeding off any of our Novy and Siduri’s single-vineyard wines that we feel need additional concentration. Usually this bleed off is performed shortly after crushing and a rosé wine is produced. We wait and perform this bleed off (called “saignée”) a few days later than is the norm, this producing a more darkly colored wine. We then add back skins from wines that we have already pressed off to give the wine more structure and weight. The fermentation occurs on these skins in a tank and the wine is then drained to bins by gravity and added back to a tank where it is mixed together and, after malolactic fermentation, bottled.

Four-Mile Creek is thus special for several reasons. Its parentage includes some of California’s most famous vineyards (including the Page-Nord Vineyard in Napa, the Unti Vineyard in Dry Creek Valley, the Pisoni, Garys’ and Rosella’s Vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands, the Clos Pepe Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills, and the Carlisle Vineyard in the Russian River Valley). The final wine is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Zinfandel, and Pinot Noir. Unlike many of its price-point peers, the wine is produced using gravity (no pumping) and is bottled entirely unfined and unfiltered. At this price point we think the 2004 Novy Four Mile Creek is an extremely good value red wine that provides a great deal of pleasure. Although lighter in body that Siduri and Novy wines, it shows ample fruit and also a unique earthiness (from the Syrah). We honestly find that this wine improves with several hours aeration and thus should be even better with a few month’s age. We hope that you enjoy it!

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