The name 'Highlander' celebrates our Celtic heritage. As Crawfords, we trace our clan lineage back 700 years, with pateral roots in Ayrshire and Falkirk, and maternal lineage from Ireland. There is something fresh and bold, vibrant and racy in the highlands. We find these characteristics in this wine as well.

This vineyard is located in Carneros where the vines enoy moderate temperatures during the early afternoon, and a daily afternoon breeze coming in from San Pablo Bay. This cool breeze keeps the sugars down and the acids up, which provides us with just the balance of bright, fresh character that we are looking for in our Sauvignon Blanc.

The vineyard is hand-picked at night, so the fruit is delivered to the crush pad first thing in the morning, sometimes before sunrise. We whole cluster press the grapes (the whole clusters, stems and all, are put inside the press). Whole cluster pressing gives us a nice clean juice for our fermentation. We transfer the juice to neutral french oak barrels for fermentation. Neutral barrels are generally 2-3 years old. They give us the benefit of barrel fermentation, but with little to no oak flavor or oak aroma influence on the wine. We don't use malo-lactic fermentation in the Sauvignon Blanc, prefering to leave the natural acidity and freshness in the wine. The wine is aged for about 6 months in barrel prior to bottling in early spring.

We find this wine to be very aromatic, with contrasting and complementary tones of ripe tropical fruit and citrus on the nose. On the palate, this wine is crisp and refreshing, dispalying a vibrant acidity and clean, citrus fruit.

8 Barrels / 182 cases