2017 High Road James Berry Vineyard

JoAnn and Cris Cherry have separated the wines made from their home estate vineyard, MAHA, which are now made under that label, so the lineup here has become more streamlined. Cris Cherry believes that will help to maintain focus on each project while he also continues to refine the Villa Creek bottlings and his own overall work. There’s no question that the wines here are steadily becoming more refined, regardless of the heat of recent vintages. Sourced as they are from cooler sites on the west side of Paso Robles, there’s always a degree of freshness to these wines, as Cherry points out, but I’ve found that his winemaking has also been going steadily deeper on delicacy and detail rather than power over the last five or so years, a move that’s highly welcome.