We are pleased to be a part of this exciting event June 2, 3 to 5 PMBacaraSomm

We will be one of the fifteen wineries representing the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association. www.sbcountywines.com

Please click on those little Twitter and Facebook apps located at the upper righthand corner of this website to follow us or send us a e-mail. We would like to have you register your e-mail address with us to recceive our What’s New at BFV quarterly Newsletter. Also, if you have visited us, we would love for you to make some comments ( favorable we hope)  at www.CaliforniaWineryAdvisor.com/wineries/view/1149

Thanks to all our devotees and new fans of BFV who stopped by to taste.  Beautiful day, great attendance and some awesome wines. A special thanks to Dr Rob Baehner for helping us pour our wines.  Our 2012 first edition Sauvignon Blanc from Happy Canyon received high praise. It will be ready for the market in a few weeks.

All of our 2010 Wines won GOLD & SILVER awards!!! The 2010 Petit Verdot Estate and the 2010 Merlot Estate were awarded GOLD and the 2010 Solus Cabernet Sauvignon Estate was awarded SILVER. We will be pouring these wines February 16th in San Francisco at the Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center.

Enjoy these Spring days and nights with a bottle of our 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon SOLUS Estate Grown. We reduced the price from $34 to $28 !

An early assessment of the 2011 and 2012 wines

- The 2011 V3 has been evolving nicely in barrel. It is beginning to taste more like wine as opposed to its intensely fruit-driven incarnation of last year. Moderate tannins and bright acid frame deep boysenberry fruit. Anticipated bottling date: April, 2013

- The Sauvignon Blanc is coming along nicely and is being stirred weekly. Come the New Year, I will switch to bi-weekly stirring and should be able to better assess the wine as it will fall more clear between stirrings. Flavors lean towards lemon curd and grapefruit. I anticipate bottling it with the 2011 V3 in April of 2013.

- The Merlot has been in barrel for almost a month and is coming along nicely. It is a bit tough to evaluate at the moment, as it is still not through ML. That said, it has nice richness and is seriously structured. It should easily make a single varietal bottling. Flavors lean towards black cherry and licorice.

- The Cabernet Sauvignon lots have both been pressed early this week. The larger of the two lots received a healthy dose of new French oak—a higher percentage than has traditionally been the case for Baehner-Fournier—as I feel it has the guts and concentration to handle the additional structure that new wood can bring to a wine.

- The Petit Verdot is remarkable. It is tremendously dark, with a good impression of sweetness and richness on the palate. Surprisingly supple for the variety, it should be an uncharacteristically showy wine early in its life. I am extremely pleased with it and will be pressing it off sometime early next. It is slated for 50% new wood to lend some structure to the outrageous level of fruit.

As a whole, I am ecstatic with the 2012s. They are very structured yet with showy fruit. They should serve as a nice counterpoint to the succulent and vibrant nature of the 2011 V3.

Nick—11/29/2012

We have finally released our love wine Petit Verdot 2010 Estate Grown after 19 month of barrel aging and 5 months more of bottle aging!

Please read Nick de Luca’s winemaker tasting notes in the Media Section found in the lower left corner of our Home Page.

Please go to our Wine Store to read about these two newly released Estate Grown wines. Read the tasting notes by our Winemaker Nick de Luca.

Almost 500 cases! all from our Estate Vineyard.  200+ SOLUS Cabernet Sauvignon, 100+ Merlot and Petit Verdot wrapped with our new labels and logo. They will be released in about 3 months. Winemaker Nick de Luca in charge.

On my most recent walk of the vineyard, just the other evening, I was floored by the extent of shoot growth in our Bordeaux varieties. Looking around the Santa Ynez Valley, I’m only seeing a centimeter or two of growth in the earliest Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot sites; whereas at Baehner Fournier we have as much as 4 to six inches of growth in our most advanced vines. It is an instance like this that reminds me of just how unique our site is.

Extremely isolated from other vineyards in the area and perched upon a peebbly hillside in the northeastern end of the Valley, the vineyard is whipped by winds coming from all directions, and can be relatively cool during the day due to ferocious, moderating winds. Meanwhile, insofar as the vineyard often finds itself above the inversion layer, we remain fairly warm at night and experience a remarkable amount of shoot growth during the wee hours. Sometimes I think I can actually hear the young shoots growing.

Similar conditions often prevail during harvest, finding the vineyard several degrees warmer than the surrounding lower portions of the Santa Ynez Valley. This evening warmth during the final ripening stages of the grapes is part of what brings silky tannins to our wines. It is common logic that, when the temperature drops below 50 degress Fahrenheit, metabolism stops in the vine. These conditions typically prevail in the Valley and this is part of why Bordeaux varieties from here have often been accused of being hard or green. Meanwhile, when nighttime temperatures remain on the warmer side of 50, the vines will stay active and continue to gradually ripen their fruit, softening tannins and respiring tart acids.

The Baehner Fournier vineyard, because of its location above the inversion layer, benefits from such nighttime ripening. It is a significant contributing factor to our unique terroir and has much to do with the depth and lushness of our wines. I love being reminded in instances like these—-early season shoot growth, for example—–how the supremacy of site will mark the character of a wine so signicantly.

April 6, 2012

Nick de Luca
Winemaker