Each year, Wine Spectator editors survey the wines reviewed over the previous twelve months and select their top 100 based on quality, value, availability and excitement. The only California Merlot to make the list this year, our 2007 Napa/Sonoma Merlot garnered 94 points in the June 15, 2010 issue.

Here we are in early November with a beautiful 76-degree shirt-sleeve day and we are only a little more than half way through harvest! Still to come in is cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit verdot. Despite some rain two weekends ago and a light sprinkle on October 30, the fruit flavors are phenomenal; deep, dark and complex with no green whatsoever in any of the skins, seeds or stems. And we are getting this flavor intensity at relatively low brix for us (averaging roughly 26).

We are pleased to report that our 2001 Pride Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon won a recent re-enactment of the famous Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 that compared chardonnay and cabernet from France and California. The Wine and Food Society of New York hosted the event at the University Club in New York City on September 21, 2010.

The first vintage we produced a merlot was 1992. After having always thought that the St. Emillion and Pomerol reds were the most delicious from Bordeaux and having had some nice examples from Markham and Duckhorn in the Napa Valley in the late 1980s, it was easy to want to feature merlot as its own varietal and not just as a blending grape. In addition to loving merlot for its expansive pleasing mouthfeel and concentrated berry flavors, it seemed wise for a winery just starting up to have a wine that is accessible in its youth.

One of the greatest things about producing wine is that you never get bored of doing “the same old thing”; there is an ever-changing agenda that evolves with the seasons and is never the same from one vintage to the next. The first leaves are all out on the vines now, the last droplets of rain have fallen this morning (so we hope), and what the 2010 growing season will be like is an absolute mystery at this point.

Steve and Laurence Pride were in New York City on January 27th for a gala black-tie event at Thomas Keller's much-heralded Per Se Restaurant. Ten of our wines complimented an ethereal seven-course dinner hosted by the International Wine and Food Society of New York.

Chef Emeril Lagasse and his wife Alden hosted their fifth annual Carnivale du Vin in Las Vegas in November raising over $1.9 million for his Emeril Lagasse Foundation serving underprivileged youth.