Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/935769
{ SOMMjournal.com } 57 he began, "is a time machine. You're going back in time and tasting the mood of the winemaker, the mood of Mother Na - ture"—not to mention glimpsing into your own past. "Maybe your grandmother was making a pie and sent you to pick black - berries," he continued. "Maybe you smell cigar and some leather, and your father comes back to you." To be sure, Woodbridge's 100% Cabernet Sauvignons are famed for the evocative intensity of their ripe-to-bursting and everlasting dark fruit interwoven with silken strands of spice, smoke, and cocoa. We started with a trio from the Kayli Morgan Vineyard near St. Helena, which has consistently produced wines marked by a shimmering defiance of their own gravity—including the 2006 vintage, "when a lot of wines were considered very rustic tanninwise," noted Woodbridge. "But there's a continuous line throughout Hundred Acre of fine, luscious, sexy tan - nins." To illustrate the extent to which such successes hinge on his spare-no-expense, make-no-compromise approach, he re- galed the crowd with a tale about the time in 2009 he hired pilots to dry his vineyards via helicopter after a mid-harvest storm— adding, in his gleefully cantankerous style, that "I'd rather blow my head off than cut a corner or cheat a little, and I've got the guts to [expletive] do it." The crowd's knowing laughter only spread as he added, "If anyone's offended by foul language . . . there's not a thing I can do." We also tasted a few vintages from the Few and Far Between Vineyard—the Cal - istoga site for which Woodbridge paid the highest price per planted acre in Napa's history—and the Ark Vineyard at the base of Howell Mountain, which spans "three different beachfronts from three different epochs," he explained. "It's planted to dif - ferent clones and rootstocks of Cabernet based on how the soil changes from the bottom to the top of the block." From Ark came one of the most anticipated wines of the tasting, eliciting actual cheers upon its introduction: the Deep Time 2013, which emerged after four years in new French oak with all the multilayered richness of Black Forest cake checked by touches of savory spice. No less notable, however, was the Deep Time 2009 from Ancient Way Vineyard, espe - cially considering Woodbridge no longer makes his Barossa Valley Shiraz ("every year was the most grueling torture festi- val," he said). While enjoying the 2009 Deep Time, we realized it shared the same lip-smacking notes of candied black olive, baked plum, and leather as the other Ancient Way vin - tages we tried. The five-year-aged beauty was also nearly as Portlike in its grip as the 2008 vintage of Woodbridge's own bran- dy-fortified wine, Fortification—and no literal description could top his metaphori- cal one: "Having a bottle of this in your cellar is like having a fast car, a [expletive] of guns, and a bulletproof vest, and you've gotta get out of Dodge because you've been a bad boy." Still, the highlight of the afternoon may have been the newly-released Wraith 2013 (evidenced by the fact that it reap - peared during the five-course winemaker's dinner that followed at Jean-Georges Steakhouse). "For years," Woodbridge explained, "I wanted to make a wine that was a combination of Kayli Morgan and Ark. I dialed the safe a thousand times in my head trying to figure out the possible combinations, and I couldn't do it." But following the purchase of Few and Far Between, he began experimenting with "the greatest of the three vineyards" until the blend finally clicked. "It set me free as a winemaker because I ran into the wall, and then I broke through the wall," he added. Does that mean the best of Hundred Acre is yet to come? In Vegas or not, you can bet on it. Just days after the tasting, news broke that Woodbridge had sold his wildly-successful value brands— Layer Cake, Cherry Pie, and If You See Kay—to Vintage Wine Estates. Hundred Acre Wine Group/One True Vine GM and COO John Hard- esty explains the rationale behind the decision: "Hundred Acre is the base of operations—the crown jewel that haunts Jayson more than anything. The rest of it was always about being an incubator: Nobody at his level had gone, 'Hey, I'm going to make a $15 wine that tastes like it should be $30.' Our core compe- tency is to create a given product and have the freedom to do what- ever we want with it, and when it stops being fun, sell it. Once you go over a certain volume, it's not that fun anymore." We'll explore what this sole focus on Hundred Acre might entail in an upcoming issue.