Red volcanic rock, and a cabernet that starts there

Mitch Hawkins and Dick Peterson made this vintage on the estate above Lower Lake. The cabernet grows on red volcanic rock, and the highest rows reach 2,200 feet. What does Red Hills cabernet taste like when the vines sit at 2,200 feet on red volcanic rock?

The Tasting Panel scored this 2023 a 97. That note is the reason to trust the bottle: graphite and dried violet under blackberry wrapped in dark chocolate, a velvet feel, and chewy tannin that finishes on leather and blue fruit. The single bottle stays at the winery price, $85. From six bottles the price is $34, 60 percent off that price.

Lake County diamonds in the red soil

David Boies bought the old El Roble Grande Ranch in Lower Lake in 1982. In 1999 the Boies and Hawkins families opened the winery, and Mitch and Tracey Hawkins took the daily work. Cabernet Sauvignon went in during 2001, fifteen acres of it. Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Petite Sirah followed in 2007, an acre of each.

Eighteen planted acres sit inside a ranch of about 1,340 acres. The rows run from 1,800 feet to 2,200, on slopes from 15 percent to 85 percent. The vines are head trained and cane pruned, on a vertical shoot position. The cabernet clones on the ranch include Entav 191, Entav 337, 15, and 337, on 101-14 rootstock, at five feet by eight, about 1,089 vines to the acre.

The ground is rocky red volcanic soil, Aiken, Collayomi, and Whispering loam. Clear quartz turns up in that red earth. The ranch calls those stones Lake County diamonds, quartz from Mount Konocti. The estate has been CCOF organic since 2004 and Demeter biodynamic since 2008.

Blackberry, leather, and French oak

The 2023 Block Three is 85 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 10 percent Cabernet Franc, and 5 percent Petit Verdot. Alcohol is 14.3 percent and the pH is 3.4. All of it went into French oak. The estate bottled 400 cases. Dick Peterson and Mitch Hawkins are the winemakers named for this vintage. The winter brought one and a half times the usual rain, bud break came late, and the summer stayed mild, with few heat spikes. The ranch called it one of its largest harvests, and the winery describes the style as old-world, with a light hand in the cellar.

Wine Enthusiast scored it 94 and named it an Editors' Choice in the October 2026 issue. Tonya Pitts tasted olallieberry, boysenberry, dried flowers, and French oak, then black plum, blackberry, vanilla, a little maple, and mocha, with tannins she called silky. She wrote to aerate the wine and pour it with grilled bison.

A closed ranch, and the people who run it

The ranch is run as a closed system. Scottish Highland cattle graze the same ground the vines grow on, and that biodynamic loop has carried a Demeter certification since 2008. Tracey Hawkins, a founding partner, explains the work in the winery's own film. The winemakers on this 2023 are Dick Peterson and Mitch Hawkins.

The two films here are the winery's own. One is Tracey's introduction to the biodynamic vineyard. The other is a short look at how the house makes the wine. Neither film is a tasting of this 2023 bottle.

Grilled bison, and a ribeye with blackberry

Tonya Pitts sent this cabernet toward grilled bison. A butter-basted bison ribeye, with crispy potatoes beside it, gives the blackberry and the leather something browned to meet.

A grilled ribeye with blackberry on the plate follows the same fruit. The chewy tannin wants the fat on the steak, and the blue fruit in the finish is already on the board.