WeatherEye Hillfighters

All good stories have one thing in common: conflict. It’s the conflict between the endearing protagonist and the contemptable antagonist that creates drama and drives the story forward. 
 
We believe every bottle of wine tells its own story. The grape is our protagonist, whose goal is to express its fullest potential. Our antagonist is the climate, the location, soil conditions, and weather fluctuations that create obstacles to achieving the main character’s goal. 
 
When comparing a wine through a vertical tasting, where you sample different vintages of the same wine, you get the chance to see the wine equivalent of a narrative arc on a grand scale. If a single bottle is a Hemmingway story, drawn from lean prose chronicling a stoic fisherman full of emotional depth, vertical tastings are akin to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a sweeping epic that tracks multiple characters who experience life, love, and loss during the Napoleonic Wars. 
 
It might not be quite as epic as War and Peace, but this Saturday, we’ll be doing a vertical tasting of WeatherEye’s Hillfighter red blends from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Made with the same grapes used for their WeatherEye Estate flagship wines, the Hillfighter blends vary from year to year depending on yields from each harvest, in effect telling a different story each vintage.

The 2019, dominated by Tempranillo but featuring Syrah, and Mourvèdre, got off to a late start due to fierce winter storms that left deep snow yet still delivered the rich flavors and structure associated with Red Mountain. 
 
The 2020, full of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache with Merlot, Tempranillo, and Syrah playing a lesser role, skirted nearby wildfires and a smaller than usual crop of smaller berries provided intensified flavors that give this vintage depth, richness and character. 

The 2021, which showcases Grenache, Cabernet Suavignon, and to a lesser degree Syrah and Tempranillo, was threatened by a late June heat dome but the Estate’s thoughtfully designed vineyards blocks and meticulous winemaking resulted in a powerful and balanced wine. 

The 2022, Syrah dominate along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, and Mourvèdre, is known as the Impossible Vintage because it ended up a beautifully complex wine full of flavor and structure despite an April blizzard that delayed vine development.