Hommage Artist Series Reserve
Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley

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Wine Stats

Vintage: 2006 Variety: 97.5% Cabernet Sauvignon 2% Petit Verdot 0.5% Cabernet Franc Vineyard: 97.5% Tenma Vineyard (Calistoga) 2% Dunaweal Vineyard (Calistoga) 0.5% Mitsuko's Vineyard (Carneros) Soil: cobbled clay-loam (Tenma Vineyard) sandy clay-loam (Dunaweal Vineyard) haire clay-loam (Mitsuko's Vineyard) Harvest Date: October 19-27 (Tenma Vineyard) October 14 (Dunaweal Vineyard) November 1 (Mitsuko's Vineyard) Aging: 19 months in 65% new French oak, 35% neutral oak

Alcohol: 14.8% T.A.: 5.8 g/L pH: 3.63 Residual Sugar: 0.058 g/L Bottled: August 2008 Cases: 1866 six-bottle cases Optimal Drinking: 2010-2023

Jan Shrem chose Hommage as the name for Clos Pegase's reserve wines as a tribute to the memory of the artist whose painting graces the label-and to the artisans, growers, enologists, craftsmen and workers whose efforts are reflected in the wines at Clos Pegase. Each year the Shrems proudly choose a different work of art from their extensive collection to be reproduced on the Hommage label.

Tasting Notes

With masses of blackcurrant and black cherry on the nose, the wine opens with great intensity. Jammy and smoky, toasty oak notes are well integrated. The palate is big, fat, dense and juicy with tremendous weight and fruit intensity leading to a long finish.

Vineyard & Vintage Notes

The 2006 season began with flooding over the New Years period, which made national news, but left dormant vines unaffected. Plentiful rain in the spring followed, leading to a slightly delayed budbreak, and the cool weather persisted right into early May, slowing the onset of flowering. A burst of warmth in the latter half of May and then into June was perfect for fruit-set and produced great uniformity of berry development. A moderate and dry summer was punctuated by a 10-day heat spike in late July, but as fall progressed, mild conditions prevailed. The harvest was approximately two weeks later than "average" and the consistency of weather during flowering and harvest has given Cabernet Sauvignon of great purity and depth.

Our Tenma Vineyard, formerly known as Palisades, is 2.5 miles northwest of the winery and provides the core of the Hommage, and shows the major changes in viticultural practices we commenced with for 2006, so great that we changed the vineyard name to the Japanese word for 'Pegasus' to reflect our new beginning! Dunaweal Vineyard is at the winery on the valley floor in Calistoga, with deep and fertile sandy clay-loam. The Cabernet Franc comes from new plantings in Carneros at Mitsuko's Vineyard on Haire clay loam.

Winemaking Notes

With harvest, fermentation and extraction regimes guided by consulting winemaker Paul Hobbs, each component remained in tank for up to 42 days on skins, and was then pressed direct to barrels to complete the malolactic fermentation. Three rackings were performed for each individual lot in January, May and August of 2007 prior to racking and blending in December of that year. The wines were racked once more in December 2007 and then regularly topped until bottling in 2008.

Label Art

Our label pays Homage to Hans Hartung (1904-1989) with his Lyrical Composition from 1948. A German-French known for his gestural abstract works, his was a reaction to cubism characterized by spontaneous brushwork, the use of paint straight from the tube, and calligraphy. He was a leader of the Tachist style and a forerunner of American Lyrical Abstraction

Previous Vintages

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001