Flora Springs Trilogy Napa Valley Red Blend 2023
£74.95
The wine
A complex and elegant Napa Valley red. Black cherry, blackberry and violet leap from the glass, married with subtle spicy notes of cedar and cocoa. Broad and generous on the palate, with polished tannins and a refreshing acidity.
Trilogy blends Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot from the Komes Ranch vineyard in Rutherford, perched at up to 300 metres in the Mayacamas and bordered by oak and redwood forest, which gives it a cooler microclimate and a freshness unusual for the valley floor. Soils are gravel and loam, farmed organically. Three days of pre-fermentation maceration, fermented in stainless steel with daily punch-downs, then aged in a combination of French and American oak with 35% of it new.
The producer
Flora Springs
View all Flora Springs winesFlora Springs takes its name from Flora Komes and from the natural springs that rise behind the old stone winery at the foot of the Mayacamas in Napa Valley. Jerry and Flora Komes bought the derelict property in 1977, and the family has been there ever since.
The winery building itself is considerably older. It was built in 1885 by two Scottish brothers, then abandoned during Prohibition, and the Komes family restored it after buying the site. It is one of the oldest working winery buildings in the valley.
The estate now farms vineyards across Napa, from Oak Knoll lower down the valley to Rutherford and up into the Mayacamas foothills, and the range is built on that spread of sites: warmer, lower ground supplies flesh and fruit, the higher, cooler blocks supply structure and acidity. The vineyards are farmed organically with a particular focus on soil health and biodiversity.
Two wines define the house. Trilogy, a Bordeaux blend from the Komes Ranch vineyard in Rutherford, and Soliloquy, made from a Sauvignon Blanc clone found on the estate in 1989 and later certified by UC Davis as unique to that one vineyard.
