The Volcanic Hill bottling of 2009 was tasted at the winery with winemaker Graham Wehmeier. Showing the most restrained of the three single-vineyard bottlings, it also seems to possess qualities of all three, with its red, black, and blue fruit notes even at 14 years of age. Subtle notes of cedarwood and fig, bay laurel and bay leaf emerge on this medium- to full-bodied red. The gorgeous earth notes of this wine are laced with such intense minerality and rich cassis notes on top of tobacco spices that you’d be fooled into thinking it was a fine Pauillac. In 2020, the Rouzaud family of Champagne Louis Roederer acquired this historic estate, including this 3.2-ha site on volcanic ash atop Diamond Mountain. Frédéric Rouzaud, President of Maison Louis Roederer, leads all the icon companies of the Roederer Collection, which includes Roederer Estate, Domaine Anderson, Scharffenberger Cellars, and Merry Edwards in California’s Russian River Valley, to name a few. (JC)