Red Blend 'Pato Heritage'

From the southern edge of Oakley planted on sand, Pato Heritage wine is a lovely reflection of the vintage in this increasingly suburbanized area. Due to the drought, they opted to give the vines a bit of a break and picked most of the Mataro for rosé, so this wine leans a bit more heavily into Zinfandel and Petite Sirah than normal. There has always been a beautiful relationship between the finesse provided by sand and the brawny and tannic nature of a variety like Petite Sirah. Here, the sandy soils buffs away the variety’s rougher edges and makes for a deeply colored but elegant element of the wine filled with dark fruit and black pepper. This is combined with the vibrant fruit from Zinfandel to make a wine that is rich but svelte. Raised almost entirely in puncheon with a small amount of new oak, this wine will be delicious in the near term but will also age nicely for up to a decade.