Spring 2006

Dear Friends,

We have three wines to offer you this Spring: 2002 Cain Five (750 ml), NV3 Cain Cuvée (750 ml), and 2002 Cain Concept magnums (1.5L).

The 2002 Cain Five is a true reflection of the vintage. You may have heard that 2002 is a better vintage than 2001—well, not necessarily better, but definitely different. The 2002 is another notch riper, fuller, rounder, and sweeter than the 2001. Full bodied, smooth, and fleshy, the 2002 drinks very well right now. With aromas of ripe fruit, nutty, and toasty oak, the 2002 Cain Five is warm and rich on the palate and gives great satisfaction now, along with great substance. It is a wine that will last at least ten years, and it will give a great deal of pleasure today and all along the way.

You probably know that since 1995 we’ve been in the process of replanting our Cain Vineyard—slowly, tediously, laboriously. With the 2002 vintage, we have the greatest contribution of our own Cain Vineyard since 1996. The 2002 Cain Five is 92% Spring Mountain District—essentially from our own vineyard, with a little help from our closest neighbor, York Creek Vineyards. This is important in that the flavors of our area, and particularly of our vineyard, are so distinctive as to render the wine unlike anything else.

One last point about our winemaking: Our methods are simple—our impulse in not trying to over-control things is to let the wine be itself. We’re looking for personality, individuality, and complexity that can be achieved, not through neglect, but only from judicious nonintervention. In this culture, the Cain Vineyard positively radiates.

In keeping with the “NV” series, the NV3 Cain Cuvée is dominated by the 2003 vintage and complemented by a few lots from the 2002 vintage—about 17% of the NV3 blend. Traditionally, blending of vintages has been limited to Champagne, or Sherry, or basic table wine, and in most cases the goal has been to create a “standard product” by eliminating vintage-to-vintage variation. Our goal is not to make the same wine each year, but to make a wine that reflects positively on the character of each vintage without falling helplessly into the pitfalls that a given vintage might contain. Our best example is still our first, the NV8, in which we filled in the hollow of the 1998 vintage with the fullness of 1997, while we allowed the perfume and delicacy of 1998 to prevail. Since, we have rediscovered what generations of winemakers have known: that blending an older vintage—if done deftly—can bring complexity to a younger wine while preserving the integrity of the whole.

Still more full-bodied that the NV2, the NV3 has a slightly brighter nose of raspberries and flowers, but with better-integrated oak, this latest rendition of our Cain Cuvée is one of our best. You’ll enjoy this wine either for immediate drinking or after a couple of years in the bottle.

As a final teaser, we would like to offer you a few magnums of the 2002 Cain Concept. If you purchased from our Fall 2005 offering, perhaps you already know what a satisfying wine this is. Made along the same lines as our Cain Five, but with fruit drawn from the benchlands of the Napa Valley, we’ve got a very round, flowing wine. It drinks well now, but it will age still more slowly and progressively to perfection in a magnum. We have only 25 cases available, so this offer is limited to two magnums per order and is available only on a first-come, first-served basis.

We hope that you will enjoy these offerings, and we thank you for your support!

Christopher Howell
Winemaker/General Manager