Nose
Sour cherry fruit is layered with caramel, vanilla and toasty oak.
Palate
Creamy and velvety entry allows the ripe, cherry flavors to fill the midpalate. The youthful tannins grip through the finish to allow pairing with heartier fare.
Growing Conditions
Our estate Pinot Noir vineyards are planted with five different clonal selections: 113, 115, 667, 777 and Pommard. Each offers an individual layer to the complexity of our blend. In the vineyard, fruit is dropped post-veraison to a single cluster per shoot. Growing Pinot Noir in the Oak Knoll District requires fastidious attention as the temperatures and conditions are much warmer during the season. Using a longer 48-hour cold
soak helps us with color stabilization in our Pinot Noir. After the first 12 hours, we saignée (or bleed off) to make our Rosé to further concentrate both flavors and color. We have also found that applying carbonic maceration fermentation, a process where the grapes are fermented whole, also aids in the color stabilization. Special yeast selections and lots of love go into creating and fine tuning this wine each and every vintage!
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 a warm winter brought us our 4th year of drought, freak hail storms and a long, extended bloom in most varieties. We called the vintage the ‘hot tub time machine’ which behaved much like our 2007 vintage. It began fast & early, but having patience to wait for flavor development helped us to create wines of which to be proud…again!
Winemaking
100% Whole Berry Maceration 48 Hour Cold Soak
Aging
12 Days Skin Contact 100% Stainless Steel Fermentation
Appearance
The 2015 vintage produced another wine that can be aged for several years as the dark cranberry color attests
Food Pairing
We enjoy Pinot Noir with planked salmon over a bed of grains tossed with arugula and herb
vinaigrette.
