Nose
The nose is attractive and ripe, made of clean stone fruit flavors and vibrant citrus notes.
Palate
The
silky texture and the long, crisp, fruit-filled finish complete our wine, un-obscured by oak.
Growing Conditions
Planning our wine from the start, we cane pruned in February, then shoot thinned in May, cluster
thinned at verasion, and did not leaf strip. All these efforts promoted concentration in the fruit
early in the year. The shaded fruit and small crop support the elegance and concentration in our
wine.
Harvest
The June 11th flowering was ideal and it afforded us an early ripe harvest on September 12th,
at dawn. We finished harvest three days later with the clone #95 chardonnay. The block ‘89 was
classically ripe at 23.2°brix and clone #95 was 21.5° brix, with pHs of 3.2 and organic acids of
10g/L.
Winemaking
We hand sorted clusters. Then we both whole cluster pressed some fruit and crushed the
other blocks of chardonnay by a unique method I designed to allow for greater extraction and
texture in the wine. We do not alter the juice with finings or additions of acid or water. Instead, we
grow our fruit to balance the natural juice acids so that our wine needs no additions. The resulting
rich and vibrant wine offers a balanced acidic and silky style is the hallmark of our chardonnay.
The raw juice fermented in mature Burgundy barrels and was lees stirred with partial malolactic
fermentation.
Aging
We bottled the chardonnay July 20, 2010.
