In a recent kitchen table conversation, BE winegrower Dave Brown explained that he hesitates to call himself a winemaker. Dave is in the increasingly rare position of being an artisan producer who farms his own grapes. (His self-selected moniker, winegrower, reflects the two symbiotic roles he inhabits as both farmer and – it's true – winemaker.)

This is the beauty – indeed the advantage – of being an estate winery: the fruits of our labor quite literally are our own, since we depend solely upon our own farming practices for the wine grapes whose juice we ultimately bottle.



The BE family of wines are purely vineyard-driven, deriving their distinguishing characteristics not from any equipment they pass through or any processing they undergo, but rather from the unique soil conditions and microclimate that prevail in the nine distinct vineyard blocks currently planted on our property. (Mother Nature has a hand in the matter as well, since she alone controls the weather.)

As such, Dave considers his role to be defined primarily on the farming side. The most nuanced part of his job is taking cues from the vineyards as they progress through each growing season.

Perhaps, then, more than a grape whisperer, he is a grape listener. By the time the fruit comes in at harvest and goes into tank following crush, Dave's winemaking work is largely done. The fermentation and barrel aging stages are an incubation period over which he keeps watch. He doesn't so much make wine; he grows it.

To discover what all of the whispering and listening is about, check out our 2008 Napa Valley zin (pictured above). Currently in its fifteenth year of production, this is our hallmark wine, and the one that has earned Dave Brown a reputation as one of the finest zinfandel producers in the Napa Valley.

Thank you to all who took advantage of our March Madness event! We've sold out of our 2005 Chaos Theory, and soon our 2006 Arrested zin will be no more.

The Arrested myth is worth recounting for those unfamiliar with the history of this unique "double estate" dessert wine.

Nearly ten years ago, winemaker Dave Brown produced his first late harvest zin from the 2001 vintage. Knowing it wouldn't appear regularly in the BE lineup – the growing season rarely supports the late harvest proposition, which requires a special set of conditions to yield just the right juice – we adorned it with our first ever black label. Such a well-structured dessert wine was this that many of our customers took to buying and consuming it like a regular zin.



The BE black label has reappeared only once since then, on our 2004 Late Harvest zin (our first ever half-bottle package, pictured here).

Meanwhile, Dave was barrel aging 450 gallons of BE zinfandel brandy that had been distilled for us by his good friend Marko Karakasevic of Charbay fame. The 2005 growing season was not conducive to late harvest zin production, but consumer demand was high for another dessert style BE wine. And so our Arrested zinfandel – to our knowledge the first ever "double-estate" fortified dessert wine (a.k.a. Port, if we could legally call it that) – was born.

The 2006, our second vintage of Arrested zin, is now nearing sold out status. This is the last zinfandel dessert wine BE will produce for a spell. Get it while you can, and stay tuned!