2019 | La Pelle | Ceniza Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Ceniza Vineyard comes from the cooler Coombsville region and offers a deep purple color as well as thrilling notes of ripe blueberries, black cherries, dark tobacco, and earth. It has wonderful purity on the palate and is medium to full-bodied, has ripe tannins, awesome overall balance, and one great finish.

Producer Information

La Pelle Wines was founded in 2016 by three partners all connected through the wine industry. Maayan Koschitzky (originally from Israel) is former winemaker at Screaming Eagle and leads the Atelier Melka winemaking team, Miguel Luna (originally from Mexico) is a long-time viticulturist in the valley and Pete Richmond (local to Northern California who was the Napa Valley Grower of the Year in 2019) runs Napa based Silverado Farming Co, a highly regarded vineyard management company. The name of the brand is tribute to both the vineyard and the cellar – with respect to a tool that is used in both arenas. Miguel worked as an intern in Bordeaux where he spent much of the harvest helping shovel out tanks. And according to Maayan, Miguel would always joke around about returning to California to start his own brand, simply called the shovel. In actuality this ‘vision’ came true, albeit with a much more elegant sounding French name. Maayan’s background was initially as a Mechanical Engineer in Israel – but in his mid 20s in 2004 he switched careers and began to work in wineries. In 2010 he and his wife decided to move to the USA, and he applied for winemaking positions in the Napa Valley. He was accepted by one small premium producer in the valley but then was accepted for an intern position at Screaming Eagle to work with new winemaker at the time, Nick Gislason. He had never heard of Screaming Eagle, so he mentioned the name to his older brother – who then looked up their pedigree online and quickly realized this was a job too good to turn down. With the intent to only stay a year or two and work a single harvest before returning to Israel, Maayan and his wife moved to the Napa Valley. His first harvest at Screaming Eagle was in 2011 – the same year the new winery was completed; he recalls the tanks had arrived just in time for harvest that year. The amount of time he spent at the winery that harvest was remarkable – often working 20+ hours days over 5 months. As Maayan admits, working at Screaming Eagle as his first job in the Napa Valley was a shortcut of sorts. Instead of returning to Israel, Maayan and his wife decided to stay in the Napa Valley. Eventually he was introduced to Cameron Vawter who at the time was the winemaker at Dana Estate. Cameron offered him a job at Dana Estate but then also said he should meet Philippe Melka. Maayan remembers having lunch with Philippe, but Philippe did not have a position for him at the time. Later Philippe called Maayan and offered him a position to join his consulting wine team (Atelier Melka for a year in 2014). That position led to Maayan becoming the Director of Winemaking for Atelier Melka and eventually a partner in the business. Maayan also consults for several international projects including in Australia, Chile and Israel. From the beginning the three partners decided to invest in securing fruit from premium vineyard sources and only using grapes from vineyards they farm themselves with a focus on creating terroir driven wines. Source vineyard sites are the Lambert Vineyard in Coombsville, the Red Hen Vineyard in Oak Knoll and two vineyards in St. Helena. The importance of site in winemaking cannot be underestimated; sometimes it can be difficult to understand the truism of this until one actually visits vineyard sites (throughout the year) and notices different exposures, soils, temperatures and elevations among numerous other characters (all contributing factors to a sense of place and resulting wines).

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