2005 Communion, Inaugural Release

Controversial label. Yes, we know it was risky to call ourselves Thirsty Pagans and name our wine Communion with 3 monks and a wench happily drinking on the cover. It's meant to be controversial. Let's start a dialogue, smile and laugh! Nope, you can't overlook the religious slant to the label. (Read our bios and you'll understand.) But COMMUNION means more than breaking bread & sipping wine at the alter. It also means coming together, sharing something in common. The Thirsty Pagans have many friends from all walks of life with very different ideas of religion, politics, sex, education, etc., but every time we get together over a few bottles of wine, we're able to transcend our differences and somehow discover things that bring us together. Wine has a way of doing that. For the Thirsty Pagans, wine is our communion.

No corks! Since we only produce 250 cases per year, we couldn't take the risk of cork taint, which is why we use screwcaps for all of our wine. Can't find a corkscrew? You don't need one!

Light bottles. Plenty of wineries use wine bottles that still feel full when they're empty. We're not one of them. Ultimately, the cost gets passed onto the consumer, including higher shipping fees for heavier bottles. We wanted to avoid that. We believe you should be paying for what's IN the bottle, not the bottle itself.

Ok, on to the fun stuff...

We hand-pick and hand-sort 100% of our grapes. No scary machines bruising the fruit in the vineyard. No bats, bugs, leaves or sticks, either. Other wineries fail to mention the MOG (materials other than grapes) that actually go into your wine because most of the world's vinifera is machine-picked. But don't worry, we have no MOG in ours.

We crush, ferment & age our wine on-site at the vineyard. Precious hours aren't wasted during the wine's most important & fragile moment: the time period just after picking and just before going into the fermentation vessel. We don't truck our fruit across mountain passes or through hours of 90-degree heat to get to the crusher/destemmer. The fruit goes straight to the sorting tables as soon as it's picked.

We utilized the most efficient, state of the art, quality-driven (vs. quantity-driven) equipment for the processing & fermentation of our fruit. We strive for zero jacks when the berries go into the fermentation tank. You'd be hard-pressed to find cleaner fruit than ours. Each individual lot's temperature can be remotely controlled by our winemaker. We utilize a dry fog system for optimal humidity levels in the cellar without risking mold growth.

Our inaugural vintage aged 22 months in 100% select French oak barrels and over 12 additional months in bottle. We've been very patient to make sure the wine wasn't released before its time.

TASTING NOTES

Rob’s Take: This wine is for many occasions, to be enjoyed with family, friends, and sometimes with a quiet sunset & your own thoughts. Mother Nature directs our path and she’s blessed us with delicious fermentable fruit in the great state of Washington. The first blend of many to come, this wine shows dark color, a nose of sage & dark fruits, and clean, earthy flavors borne from basalt rock.

Jeanie's Take: Lovely garnet color. High tones of dark cherry & black fruits surrounded by exotic brown spices & fine, silky tannins. Generously fruity, earthy & bright...like a charming old friend you haven’t seen in ages but always pick up where you left off. Awesome with steak, pizza, pasta.

Crandall’s Take: Nose of red plum, blueberries, butterscotch & pencil shavings.  Initial flavors of red raspberries, pomegranate & cranberry sauce, followed by dark fruits of blackberry & black cherry.  The finish is long with firm tannins and the lingering taste of mildly smoked meat.  One characteristic that I particularly enjoy from start to finish is the mild sweetness of cigar tobacco.