2011 Veracity

This will be the last year the Epoch wines will be made at the Denner winery, as Epoch's owner, Liz and Bill Armstrong, will have completed their own facility in the Paderewski vineyard in time to receive the 2014 harvest.Winemaker Jordan Fiorentini takes a bittersweet view of that fact.She told me that while "it will be a huge, huge thrill" for Epoch to have a winery all to themselves, she'll miss the energy of being surrounded at the Denner space and in the Willow Creek area in general by pretty much the who's who of the west side Paso wine scene."It's right up the road, sure, but distances can seem to grow" over time, she said."This has been ground zero for so much that's happened here, and we've been incredibly lucky to be in the middle of it."The climatic realities of the 2011 vintage meant lower-octane wines than normal for Epoch, but that's all relative.These were among the richest, most densely packed wines that I tasted on my trip but they don't lack for a degree of elegance.And that's not simply a function of the vintage, Fiorentini told me."I've been backing steadily off of extraction and oak," she said, "because it's clear that the vineyard is always going to give us all the power we need.So now the job is to let the fruit come through as clearly as possible."