We are excited to announce the release of our 2006 Estate Small Lot Collection Pinot Noirs: High Density, Indigène, Terraces and Carrie’s. The goal of these four wines is to capture site specific expressions of pinot noir from our Santa Rita Hills estate. Because of the wide diversity of soil, aspect and clonal selection available to us, there are certain blocks and isolated clones that exhibit their own individuality, completeness and complexity. The additional irrepressible influences of severe, cold ocean
winds and nutrient deficient soils produce tiny clusters accentuating the flavor intensity of these grapes.
As a result, these wines are different interpretations of pinot noir from our estate and are therefore worthy of being bottled alone.

To protect this natural purity and integrity of fruit, it is of the utmost importance to not only have impeccable
farming practices, but also to maintain a sensitivity in the cellar with a reverence for the raw ingredients.
With all Melville pinot noirs, the cellar execution for each wine is almost identical (unless where noted)
removing our influence on the wine as much as possible. Fruit was fermented in small 1.5 ton open-top
fermenters with skin, juice and stem contact averaging 35 days. From the press, the wine flowed directly
into barrel where it remained with no SO2 until late Spring and was bottled in December 2007.

As we have previously written, the 2006 vintage was a year marked with great temperature fluctuations in atypical time frames. The start of the growing season in January was unusually warm with March registering as one of the coldest months in history. While July warmed up significantly, September was far more mild with colder temperatures prevailing which delayed the start of picking. The impact of this year's weather volatility on our fruit in combination with minimal rainfall led to smaller cluster weights (avg. 75 grams/cluster) with very tiny yet flavorful berries. These four resulting wines have more restraint and underlying strength than other recent vintages, and are more comparable in style to our 2002 vintage, where the wines struck a desirable balance between ripeness, finesse and acidity. Due to the extra lignification ( the ripeness of the stems) that comes from an elongated harvest, our winemaker, Greg Brewer, also found more complete palate presence in the finished wines.

Produced in limited quantities, these four wines will be offered exclusively to our mailing list customers on a pre-release basis. Also, a limited amount (50 of each) of large format bottles in 3L of the Terraces and Carrie's will be available. Starting March 21, all four offerings will be accessible via our tasting room and and select national markets.

On the farming front, Brent and Chad Melville are still actively pursuing and experimenting with techniques utilizing the latest sustainable products to replenish and provide nutrients to the vineyard. One area that we find promising is the practice of fertigation, or natural fertilization via irrigation using fish emulsion. Although our trials are still in infancy, this new multi-vitamin like approach appears to be increasing our vineyard's overall vitality and health.

With the 2007 Harvest now complete, it is exciting to take a sneak peek at the future. From Greg’s
perspective, he has not experienced a vintage like this in his 16 years of wine production. The 2007
vintage has a powerful combination of near ideal sugars, acidities, textures and aromatics. Although the
wines are in their youth, we look forward to their evolution and are hopeful for their potential promise.

Lastly, for those interested in visiting Santa Barbara wine country, please plan on attending our annual
winemaker dinner on April 18 and the Pinot Noir Technical Symposium on May 10. On behalf of
everyone at Melville, we cannot thank you enough for your support. None of this would be possible
without your endorsement and appreciation of our work.

— All of us at Melville Winery