2017 Connell Family Cabernet Sauvignon Chalk Hill 750 ml

Connell Family Vineyards would be a glorified hobby farm for some, but Jim Connell is an OG sommelier who poured First Growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy long before the job title hit the public lexicon. His project reflects the seriousness of someone who’s studied wine for decades.
His location makes for long hang-times and Cabernet that develops a real sophistication, featuring flavors of dark fruit overlaid with hints of pine and rosemary. It’s serious stuff.

In 1998, Jim Connell and his wife Donna finally did it. They’d bought their property, perched 800 feet above sea level in cool Chalk Hill, two decades earlier. But the rocky ground and hillside slopes meant that was never going to be easy—and if he paid someone else to do it, it wasn’t going to be cheap. So it remained a dream until, one day, Jim got himself a jackhammer and started the arduous work of planting his vineyard. 

Everything was done for quality: The vine spacing was tight, which made mechanical work more difficult, but the vineyard stayed small enough that Jim could tend it himself. To this day, he does almost all of the work in the vines on his own. That means production is correspondingly tiny, and Jim can be hands-on with the winemaking as well.

This 2017 reminds us of the wines that David Ramey made for Chalk Hill Winery in the 90s, with dark fruit buttressed by bay laurel, gravel, wild violet, and a seductive raw-chocolate note. We anticipate close to a decade of further aging potential, but man, is it going to be hard to not drink this now.