We are very excited to announce the inaugural release of Slaughterhouse Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. Our 2002 vintage is a magnificent example of a Rutherford Bench cabernet. The wine is the result of the learning experience with our home since 1997, combined with meticulous viticultural practices under the guiding eye of Josh Clark and the superb winemaking skills and experience of Jason Fisher. The grapes were fermented in small bins, keeping the grapes from the North black Davis 6 clone, the South block 337 Bordeaux clone and our 158 vines of Cabernet Franc separate so that Jason could blend the different elements to reach the optimum of flavor diversities, complexities, and style.

Our small Rutherford vineyard is painstakingly limited to less than 4 tons per acre through shoot thinning, green cropping, cluster reduction after veraison and ultimately individual grape selection both on the vine and on our stainless steel sorting tray at harvest. Our 2002 Cabernet is deeply extracted, well balanced with a long, long (did we say long?) finish. The 2002 vintage includes 2% cabernet franc.

We bottled 208 cases of 750's on June 30, 2004, along with a small quantity of large formats. We are offering the 2002 vintage in three and six bottle packs with a limit of two six packs per customer because of the limited production and pre-release interest.