Growing Conditions
Charbono is an ancient grape variety originally brought over by Italian immigrants who settled in Napa Valley. Calistoga has some of the only remaining grapevines known to exist in California. The up-valley location of the Cooke vineyard allows for a long growing season
necessary to ripen this thick-skinned grape. e dry-farmed, old vines were planted sometime in the 1970’s from budwood taken from the Inglenook property. Ripening Charbono takes some patience; rarely does the sugar get above 23° Brix which means the resulting alcohol is always below 14%. e inky color belies the moderate tannin level, but the acid levels are bright and energetic making it an excellent food wine. We’ve blended in enough Petite Sirah to flesh out the mid-palate and make the wine a little more user friendly.
Harvest
With heavy December rainfall, we had hoped for a normal wet month of February. Instead we saw the earliest bud break on record and an equally long spring of frost protection worries. However the warm, dry winter brought us our 4th year of drought, freak hail storms and a long, extended bloom in our red varieties. We called the vintage the “hot tub time machine” which behaved much like our 2007 vintage. It began fast & early, but experience has taught us to have patience to wait for flavor development in order to create wines of which to be proud…
Winemaking
100% Stainless Steel Fermented 9 Days Skin Contact
Aging
19½ Months Aged in French & American Oak 44% New Oak Barrels
