This bottle is at least as pure as transparent as my last one, and even more revealing of this layer of black rocky mineral underneath, but came across tighter and more tensile, which required slower sipping. It smells and tastes like chardonnay but it's structured almost more like a dry riesling.

Both of these 2009s were very austerely structured with tough, drying tannin that made it difficult to get a read on them and the stem influence still very much front and center. They also haven't quite fully integrated the wood yet. Here it manifests as a chocolatey flavor on the entry with the fruit sweetening up and coming to the foreground only on the finish. In proportions this is more slender and elegant than the Swan but it closes down in the glass and the structure takes over.

This is clearly a bulkier wine than the Family Farm, which made me prefer the former today, although they're built pretty similarly with prominent structure and the stems here again are obvious. Here the wood manifests in more of a cedary flavor compared to the sweeter cocoa of the Family Farm, which combined with its scale gave it a kind of claretlike presence. Obviously both of these wines need some time in the bottle to sort themselves out.

Right away it's apparent that this is more of a finished wine than either of the 2009s. This has serious spine giving it just the right amount of tartness, but here it's not obscuring any of the fruit, which is saturating and intense on the entry. It feels acute at first but really fans out and opens up in the mouth. At first it didn't seem nearly as sophisticated as the Horseshoe from a structural perspective but as it sat in the glass it went a long way towards developing the Horseshoe's caressing texture. Clearly the best Family Farm yet in my book.

This apparently got Allen Meadows' top rating in the lineup and it doesn't take long to see why (though it's really difficult to choose among this, the Skyline, and the Home). Right away on the entry this shows bona fide breed in its texture with a physical sensation of the wine actually caressing the palate, but don't call this wine soft because the spine really snaps back on the finish. This is a real yin-yang kind of wine of contradictory elements really balancing each other out, breathtakingly elegant on the front end and abrupt and powerful on the back. Undoubtedly grand cru material in its physical presence even if the flavors are still basic and primary.

Clearly the most impressive wine on the table in purely aromatic terms, and perhaps overall. This was by far the most supple wine on the table and probably the lightest in body as well, with a gentler touch than the rest. If it seems less grippy it makes up for it in elegance and transparency.

Right from sip one the elegance of this wine just takes you aback despite its actually being very structured. It's tannic but the refinement of the tannins keep impressing on every sip. It has an airiness and dimension to it as well. This has by far the fullest panoply of flavors in this lineup. In contrast with the Skyline the taste of this seems almost strangely meaty and then picks up some of the iron-like reddish rocky flavors that I remembered in the 2004. If this isn't the best Home since then it's certainly the most complete.

Stemmiest and tightest wine of the bunch and the most difficult to drink, so for the most part I didn't. Can't believe how much this has closed up in just a few months.

Kicks it up a notch aromatically from the basic Alpine, showing more stuff and somehow seeming more finessed just from the aroma although I'm not sure how that's possible. It's actually the bigger wine of the two but it has a pliancy to it, not quite as tough to drink as the Alpine but not showing nearly as well as the rest of the lineup, best to let both of these sit for awhile.