The fruit for our 2023 single vineyard Albariño was sourced once again from the Laird Vineyard, located at the Northern tip of Santa Barbara county. The Laird fruit is consistently excellent and the 2023 vintage was no exception.
We pressed whole clusters to tank and after a 20 day cold fermentation, we racked the wine to steel barrels. The wine sat for 4 months "sur lie" (on the lees) to create a bright, crisp wine with refreshing tropical fruit notes and a slightly creamy mouthfeel.
75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, 6% Merlot, 6% Malbec, 5% Petit Verdot. And as always, 100% killer!
NEW RELEASE!
We spent a great deal of time at The Undisclosed Location performing painstaking tasting trials to get the blend just right. It's true that there are worse ways to make a living but trust us when we say that the process can be quite gruelling. Nevertheless, we gritted our purple teeth and battled on to complete the mission. We hope you will enjoy the result of our sacrifice.
The nose of the 2022 Assassin exhibits warm notes of baked rhubarb and burdock root. On the palate, black cherries mingle with dark chocolate, caramel and a hint of licorice.
At Cloak & Dagger Wines, we pride ourselves on our ability to keep a secret. The fact that the Cryptology blend remains highly classifed after all these years is surely a testament to this.
And so the intrigue continues with the 13th vintage of the Cryptology blend - still a secret and still as enticing as ever. Cracking this code will require your undivided attention. And a cork screw.
The 2022 Cryptology Reserve slinks into the glass like an encrypted dispatch from a dark cellar, the blend a classified enigma that defies decryption.
The nose is a riddle of dark, brambly fruit, intertwined with a whiff of sage. On the palate, it unfurls like a cracked cipher. Waves of dark fruit roll in, juicy and elusive, shadowed by the velvety richness of ripe plum. A swirl of café au lait emerges mid-sip; creamy, bittersweet, and a touch roguish, like espresso sipped in a dimly lit safe house.
The finish delivers a tart raspberry zing, a sharp little plot twist that cuts through the opulence like a wiretap gone live, leaving you pondering the secrets it refuses to spill. Bold yet cryptic, with a structure that’s both firm and fleeting, this wine dares you to guess its shadowy origins. The finish lingers on, just like the secrecy of the blend.
