~ January 2003 ~

Happy New Year!
Hard to believe it's 2003, yet here we are, nearly at the end of January already. Like you, January has been busy spent catching up on everything we pushed aside during the holiday season, but we did manage to take a break last week to greet some visitors from Texas. Lance and Jennifer Gilliam, fans of Dan's wines since his La Crema days, made Dutton-Goldfield the first stop of their visit to the Bay Area, and we spent a wonderful couple of hours tasting through our current release wines, as well as sampling the 2002 wines in the barrel. (Pictured: Lance, Dan, Jen and Jeff in the cellar)

2002 Wines
The 2002 harvest was wonderful, and we're very excited with how the wines are coming along. All have finished malolactic fermentation, so this is a perfect time to taste them and start thinking about our blends for 2002. Because we bottle unfiltered, we put together our blends early so we have several months to monitor the blended wine before it goes into bottle in the fall.

Since being harvested, each lot of wine has been fermented and barreled separately. From one vineyard, we may create several lots, as a result of:
* various exposures and clones in the vineyard;
* different yeasts that we may use to create further diversity; and
* the selection of coopers, forests or barrel toast levels in our French oak.
By keeping these lots separate, we can utilize these unique characteristics as a tool to fine-tune our blends.

To see how the wines are progressing, we held a tasting of the 2002 lots last week. The wines were put into like groupings of no more than 6, then these were tasted blind and notes made on their progress. The initial decisions for what will go into the Dutton Ranch blends and what stands out as really unique and should be highlighted as a single-vineyard designate wine are made at this point, as well as identifying any lots that don't meet our standards and should be sold off.

After tasting over 30 different lots of wine, some of the Pinot standouts were the Devil's Gulch Vineyard (particularly the old block), the Galante Vineyard 777 clones, and a new lot for Dutton-Goldfield this year, Sanchetti Vineyard. Our plan at this point is for these Pinots to be made into vineyard-designates, along with our Rued Vineyard Chardonnay and Morelli Lane Zinfandel. As the year progresses, we'll keep you posted on how the wines are developing, so stayed tuned.

Events
Since our Zinfandel is completely sold out and the 2001 isn't released yet, we didn't participate in ZAP this year (sorry we missed those of you who came out), but we do have some other exciting events on the horizon.

February 1 and 2, Dutton-Goldfield will be taking part in the first annual San Francisco Crab & Wine Festival, taking place at Fort Mason. We'll be pouring our wine both days, so if you're in the area, be sure to stop by and say hello.

In March, Dan is off to the World of Pinot Noir in Shell Beach, California, where Dutton-Goldfield was one of only 30 wineries accepted to be a full event participant. That means Dan will be speaking at a seminar on Friday, March 21, hosting a table at dinner that evening, then pouring at the Pinot Noir by the Sea Tasting on Saturday, March 22. We hope to see some of you there!

Wine News and Reviews
We were delighted to end 2002 with a bang, and start 2003 with another one!

The "Best of Year 2002" Wine Enthusiast Magazine selected our 2000 Morelli Lane Vineyard Zinfandel 94 points (the highest Zinfandel score) and included it in their Top 100 Wines of 2002. The review reads, "An astonishing Zin, easily among the best of the vintage, and all the more exciting due to its vineyard in cold, foggy Pinot Noir country on the far west edge of the appellation. Hard to exaggerate the quality of the fruit and tannins. Dry and complex, this has the quality of a fine Napa Cabernet, with Zin's quintessentially wild personality. Only 240 cases were produced."

With that low production, we are already completely sold out of the 2000 Zinfandel. So, if you have it out there in your market, you have the only remaining bottles we know of.

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In the December 15, 2002 issue of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, our 2000 Rued Vineyard Chardonnay was rated 90 points: "A single-vineyard wine from a part of the Dutton Ranch that capitalizes on east-facing slopes to produce a riper wine than the regular release. It's elaborated with lees and oak but is still a tight, lean wine, barely nudging from citrus and apple into peach. The pedigree shows in the finesse."

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January started us out with more good news for the Rued Chardonnay, this time from Decanter Magazine (which is one of our favorite wine publications, so we're especially honored). In Norm Roby's Wines of the Month column in the January 2003 issue, Norm selected our 2000 Rued Vineyard Chardonnay as Best White, saying "Dutton Ranch is one of the Russian River Valley's oldest Chardonnay vineyards, and today ranks among the best source of Chardonnay grapes in California. On an east-facing hillside, the Rued Vineyard block was planted by the Dutton family in 1969. The fruit proved so unusual that many newer vineyards have been planted to the "Rued clone'. In 1998 grower Steve Dutton and winemaker Dan Goldfield (formerly with La Crema) merged their talents and have been making impressive vineyard-designated Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. With spicy oak, roasted grain, and sur lie character in the background, this allows the wine's pear, mineral, and tropical fruit personality to shine through in both aroma and flavour. What sets it further apart from other big Chardonnays is its solid acidity and its rich, unctuous texture. It can be cellared for several years, but it should be at its best over the next 2-3 years."

As with all our press, you can read and print these articles at www.duttongoldfield.com and choosing Making Contact and For the Trade-Downloads. We're also happy to send you these pieces the old-fashioned post office route, or get more press kits out to you that include these reviews--just give us a call at 707.823.3887. If you want to see these unique vineyards for yourself, we're always delighted to entertain our friends, too!