Bryant Wines

Released in 1992, the Bryant Family Vineyard 100% Cabernet Sauvignon is grown on our 13-acre estate vineyard on Pritchard Hill. The vineyard climbs from 900 to 1200 feet in elevation as it ascends above the shores of Lake Hennessey. With its various exposures, slopes, aspects, and soils, the complexity of the site yields unusually dynamic wines as a single varietal.

Our Bryant Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon captures the core of our hillside estate. Layers of vibrant cassis, black cherry, and black currant interplay with savory infusions of graphite, sage, tapenade, and tobacco that unfold in unwavering strata. Texturally, the palate displays profound density and minerality, woven with finessed tannin and backed by a brightness, purity, and freshness that transcends to a seemingly endless and pure finish.

The Bettina Proprietary red wine is a Bordeaux-inspired blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Sourced from esteemed vineyards in Howell Mountain, and integrated with Bryant Family Vineyard fruit beginning in 2018, the wine is co-fermented, bringing the skins of one varietal in contact with the juice of another resulting in a brooding and tensioned energy.

Deeply aromatic with notes of blue and black fruits, violets, camphor and crushed rocks, the profile is exquisitely nuanced, persistent and finessed. On the palate, the Bettina has a fleshiness to seamlessly integrate powerful tannins, which effortlessly and pleasurably manifest into an elongated and smooth finish.

Released in 2007, DB4 celebrates our founder, Don Bryant, and his love of the “4” blocks, which form the heart of our estate vineyard. Young, fresh, and approachable, DB4 can be described as the precocious younger sibling of the wines we produce.

A combination of Bryant, Madrona, Thorevilos, and Las Posadas fruit, our DB4 immediately dances from the glass with aromatics of fresh red and blue fruits, rhubarb, and menthol. Very lively and electric, the profile exhibits this freshness and is laced with notes of forest, wet river rocks, and a dusting of cocoa. The palate is concentrated, refined, and elegant, and gives way to a balanced and polished finish.

Some years give us gifts, and the 2016 Cabernet Franc was one of them. Working with UK based artist Rachel Dein, this was our first artistic collaboration. The 2016 Cabernet Franc wine demonstrates such varietal truth and distinctiveness that it merited a selective bottling. Due to the careful makeup and nature of creating this wine, the Cabernet Franc will only be available in select years. In 2023, we were once again given that opportunity, resulting in a limited production of fewer than 50 cases of 2023 Cabernet Franc.

In 2021 we were pleased to introduce our Sonoma Mountain Chardonnay. The vineyard is located on the north side of Sonoma Mountain, part of an extinct volcanic system and an area which was also once covered by the Pacific Ocean. An AVA established in 1985, Sonoma Mountain is a relatively remote and rugged area speckled with Redwood trees, vast ranches and unpaved, one way roads.  (Jack London set down roots there in 1905.) The well-draining soils on the vineyard block are a combination of white tufa and basalt, often found on mountains and foothills (the names of the series are called Toomes, Guenoc, Goulding and Red Hill). It reminds us of a saying in Burgundy that goes: “The Chardonnay grape is just a tool for extracting flavor from the soil.”

Thanks to its orientation, the block receives a warming morning sun to dry out the dawn dew but is soon shaded from the higher heat of the afternoon sun, another characteristic important to the growing of white grapes in sunny California. The vineyard sits at 750 feet above sea level and the vines were planted in 2001.

We find the wine to possess energy, with texture, crispness, and length.