The Scheid Family is Monterey's largest family-owned grape grower and winemaker.
At the very least, their grapes are used by many of the region's leading wineries.
The Scheid Family is one of the few wineries in the United States that has its own wind power generation facility and is also committed to sustainability.The Scheid Vineyards series is a rare wine that can usually only be purchased by visiting the tasting room.
<Limited Quantity> Cabernet Sauvignon, the world's most important black grape, is one of life's great joys.
We carefully select where we plant our Cabernet.
A location with warm sunlight during the day, cool nights to maintain fruit balance, well-drained soil and a gentle slope.
All of this comes together to enable us to produce exceptional Cabernet year after year.
The 2020 is a powerful, concentrated wine with aromas of blackberry, elderberry, ripe plum, and toasty tarragon and oak.
Bold and full-bodied, it's bordered by elegant tannins and finishes with lingering notes of black fruit, vanilla and mocha.
Although delicious to drink now, this rich, powerful Cabernet will age beautifully over the next 5-10 years.
The Cabernet comes from our own vineyards, San Lucas and Haymes Valley Vineyards.
San Lucas is a picture-postcard beautiful vineyard region with rolling terrain, sunny days and cool nights.
Hames Valley is located on the southern edge of Monterey and experiences large temperature differences between day and night, typically up to 10 degrees.
Each vintage, these two vineyards compete for the Cabernet throne, but San Lucas came out on top in the 2020 blend.
The 2020 growing season was marked by a mild winter followed by spring rains and mild temperatures.
The grapes ripened evenly thanks to sunny days with 30°C temperatures and cool evenings with 13°C temperatures.
Rising temperatures later in the season allowed the grapes to be harvested a little earlier than normal, with the first grapes harvested in mid-August.
This was a blessing in disguise, as storms in late August sparked numerous fires across Monterey County.
Fortunately, grapes from vineyards close to the fire had already been harvested and strong winds off Monterey Bay helped disperse the smoke and keep it from falling on our vineyards.
In a year of challenge and change, 2020, we believe this vintage of wine is a silver lining.
The grapes are hand-picked, de-stemmed, crushed and then fermented in small, open-top fermenters.
Punchdowns were performed twice daily during fermentation to gently extract color and phenolic compounds.
After racking, the juice undergoes secondary malolactic fermentation and aging for 18 months in barrels of 86% French oak, 10% Hungarian oak, and 4% American oak.
It was then bottled unfiltered to preserve the tannin structure and aromas.
Scheid Vineyards founder Al Scheid first purchased 15 acres of land on the outskirts of Greenfield, California in 1972.
At the time, wine grape growing was in its infancy in Monterey County, but Al was attracted to the region's winemaking potential.
So they consulted with Professor A.J. Winkler, an authority on grape cultivation at the University of California, Davis, who had created a climate region distribution map for grape cultivation in 1960, and gradually purchased land within Monterey County, which covers regions from Region I to Region IV, and planted grape varieties suitable for each region.
Founded by Al, Scheid Vineyards grew steadily and continued to grow with the addition of his son Scott in 1986, grape growing specialist Kurt Gornick in 1988, and his daughter Heidi in 1992.
The company now owns 12 vineyards (totaling 1,600 hectares) in the Salinas Valley, which stretches 112 km from north to south, from Region I to Region IV.
The company also built a state-of-the-art winery with a production capacity of 1.8 million cases, as well as a smaller winery for handcrafted wines, and continues to produce world-class Monterey wines.