We bottled 96 bottles of this wine!

It originated with a 2022 visit to the amazing Lisa Tenbrink-Howard at her Tolenas winery-- founded by her parents, the Tenbrinks, in 2007. She had given up on a few barrels of Petite Sirah and Zinfandel and consigned them to me.

Kaeley and I felt sure that we could save them with a little time and wizardry. We brought them to LA and did some racking and blending and sulfuring and came up with two wines that we bottled about a year later: Peter Quince at the Clavier, and the original House of Asterion.

There were about 40 gallons of wine leftover. Over the next few years, we allowed 25 of them to continue aging in an untopped barrel, and 15 locked up in single steel beer keg. We decided that the wine was finally ready to bottle this Christmas. I put together a blend of all 15 gallons from the keg, and 5 gallons from the barrel. This is the resulting wine: House of Asterion II.

The wine is mostly Petite Sirah from the Babylon vineyard, harvested very late, when the fruit was starting to dessicate on the vine. Some of the wine is Zinfandel, from Lisa's home vineyard, harvested also with some dessication, and fermented separately. We blended the two wines when we bottled the originals in 2023, and the blend has been maturing since then. The wine is tannic and pretty high in acid-- a special feature of this vineyard even when it produces very ripe fruit. The wine is completely dry and very high in alcohol-- I think nearly 17%. It is wild-- it's named after the Minotaur after all-- but there is something very charming about it. Ripe cheese. Grilled beef…