2014 Veracity

The crown jewel of Liz and Bill Armstrong’s extensive land holdings in Paso Robles is their 350-acre Paderewski vineyard, of which 67 acres are planted to vines. In addition, they own the 28 acre Catapult vineyard, in the Templeton Gap, and they recently purchased another 30 acres of vines on York Mountain that they are currently re-working and re-planting. Winemaker Jordan Fiorentini has emerged as one of the region’s brightest stars and in 2014 she able to harness the ripeness and power of this low-yielding vintage (that was the easy part) while managing to produce wines of real vivacity as well. She’s working with a variety of different concrete, oak and stainless steel vessels of varying size, as well as the random amphora, and she’s keen on working with whole-cluster fruit depending on a given vintage’s circumstances. This is an impressive set of wines from ’14 and I wish that were more to go around.