Happy New Year, from Charlie

Dear Friends of Fidelitas:

As 2016 draws to a close, I wanted to take a brief moment to thank all of you who are so supportive of Fidelitas. Plain and simple, we would not exist if it were not for all of you, our faithful, loyal, and true customers.

In the past year, we saw the release of some really great, 2013 vintage red wines. As I mentioned last year, I thought that maybe the 2013 vintage was one of my favorites since I started Fidelitas with the 2000 vintage. That still holds true after tasting these wines throughout the year. These 2013 reds will continue to improve as they age out a little more, and have not yet reached their peak by any means. The Canyons Vineyard Red and Malbec from Red Mountain were great new additions to our releases for the vintage. We look forward to continuing those wines into the future.

This coming year will see a couple of new products to our lineup. For the first time, we will make a very limited amount of Malbec from The Canyons Vineyard. Look for this wine to be released in August (with a sneak peek during Malbec Madness in January). We will also have the first release of Blackwood Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon. These vines were initially planted in 1984 and border our own Estate vineyard just to the west. The depth and intensity of this wine is incredible and we look forward to its release in April. We hope the quality of this wine is an indication of what we can look forward to in the Fidelitas Estate Vineyard. One other highlight of the upcoming year will be the release of our last vintage of Champoux Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. We started making Cabernet Sauvignon from this iconic vineyard in 2002. This release will be our thirteenth and final vintage. As many of you know, Paul and Judy Champoux have retired, and we retired from the vineyard as well to focus on Red Mountain fruit.

2017 will be the first vintage we will get fruit from our new Estate planting. It will be a very small amount but we are looking forward to seeing what the future holds for us. The newest 9-acres of Fidelitas Estate has Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. We will have a total of six different clones of Cabernet Sauvignon in production, so it should be quite interesting.

I always have people asking about how our most recent vintage, 2016 turned out. I think it is one of our more unique vintages in Washington. The year started off looking like it was going to be another very warm vintage, but starting in the summer months the weather mirrored what would be a normal year. This meant less extremely hot days and a slow even ripening of the fruit into September and October. We did see a slightly higher than normal yield with exceptional quality. The uniqueness of the vintage is that even with higher than average yields, we saw above average quality. That very rarely happens.

In closing, I would like to publicly take a moment to thank each and every person that works for Fidelitas. Although I have met many of our customers over the years, all of you have had an interaction with somebody from our organization at some time or another. These wonderful people are the voice of Fidelitas. Without them telling our story we would just be another brand. Thanks again for all your support. Cheers to 2016!

Charlie Hoppes

Fidelitas, Owner + Winemaker