We have also been careful about oak aging. Everything we do, or don't do, is to maintain the fruit. Not that we've had all successes. We had a few sketchy home-wine vintages before '98, but early Pinot Noir had a few bumps, too. And we wondered why those wines tasted funny.
Progress never comes easy.
Granted, the 1999 is only our second nice Sangiovese. Like this season's Oakland A's, we never expected to do this well with such little experience. But if we were going up against Felsina or Fontodi in a playoff series we would definitely take 'em to a game 7. I 've been tasting this wine over the past year and come to the conclusion that 1999 was a unique, perhaps even magical vintage for our Sangiovese. I thought our 1998 Sangiovese was nice because it came from an abysmally low crop.