Harlan Estate's Game Changer

If you are receiving wines from Harlan Estate, you'll find the following note card with your orders:

In short, Harlan's new packaging material is 100% biobased green cell foam. It is entirely compostable, biodegradable, recyclable, dissolvable, and clean burning. The only thing it is not, I suspect, is edible.

It is, additionally, a game changer for cult wines. In the ever tortuous journey to be the best, a packaging material that goes neatly and cleanly into the fireplace as you warm up with a glass of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is more than a neat trick. It is a bold step away from foam, which is always makes me cringe, and recycled shippers, which are better, but unsightly.

It's just too bad the wine didn't arrive when I still had the fireplace open.

Bottling Day March 31, 2010

It was sort of a wet week, with rain and sunshine off and on throughout, but we lucked out on March 31 and the air cleared for about 3 hours while we bottled our first 150 cases of wine.

The Crosby Roamann Napa Valley Introsé 2009 is a red rose color, with strawberries and orange zest on the finish. The Crosby Roamann Out On A Limb Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2009 is pure golden sunshine. Grapefruit, very pure underlying fruit and nice mouthfeel - could drink this all night long.

The Brand Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 is showing gorgeously at this young age. From a Soda Canyon vineyard, southwest facing, cropped at just 2 tons per acre, aged in all French oak, 60% new, the wine is still tight and chewy, but this is next generation Napa Valley wine. You cannot taste the new oak on this and the wine is floral and quite, I hate to admit, reminiscent of Margaux.

Find out more at Crosby Roamann's website!