This wine is so complicated we couldn’t reasonably give you all the normal nitty-gritty details about harvest date, acid, sugar, punch-down frequency, etc., without putting you (and ourselves) to sleep. The next best thing is to explain how the wine came to be.

We first built the 2005 Muir’s Legacy blend in February 2006 using Hanna Vinyards merlot, John Muir Hanna Vineyard cabernet franc and petit verdot, and Particelli Vineyard cabernet sauvignon. The remaining varietal wines were barrel aged separately until July 2007 when we were faced with the choice of bottling varietal merlot and/or cabernet sauvignon, or not. After rigorous tasting of trial blends, we settled on varietal merlot and a blend of the remainders. The final blend was 60% cabernet sauvignon (which included 6%CF and 4%PV), 33% merlot, and the secret ingredient, 7% primitivo. Both the merlot and the blend were sent back to barrels to rest before bottling 388 cases on Sep 6, 2007.

Making the blend was not the end of the work. The naming was worse. Nicole thought “Backpacker’s Red” was good. We batted several other ideas around until one day the picture of Muir and Roosevelt came to light and, voila, “Bully Red” was born. We rather doubt that wine was on the menu for the wilderness meals the two shared on their brief trip together but if it had been, this would have been the perfect one. We can just imagine Teddy saying “Johnny, this wine is bully! Perfect for the wilderness!”