a wine’s components — acidity, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, tannins and alcohol. Each of these plays a role in a wine’s taste, especially tannins and alcohol. Tannin is textural, adding body and chewiness. Alcohol lends warmth, viscosity and sweetness. Many of today’s powerful wines have too much tannin and alcohol. While they generate a lot of buzz, they tire the palette. Balanced wines, on the other hand, leave you refreshed and wanting more. My goal is to tame the power of tannins and alcohol through attentive vineyard management, patient harvest and deft winemaking.

a winemaker needs to make excellent-tasting and long-lived wines. Wines that are, in a word, balanced. Grapes from a well-managed vineyard in a good location permit the winemaker to create balanced wines with minimal intervention. My role as winemaker is to listen to what nature is trying to say. I don’t aim to create the same wine year after year. Nor do I aspire to a critic’s ideal. If I did, something wonderful would be lost: Nature’s balance — the unique interaction between the vines and the soil and the conditions of a given growing season. The benefit of following Nature’s lead is that it often points to the optimal balance of