Vintage Overview

THE BEST VINTAGE EVER?

Great winter and early spring rain got the vines off to an amazing start. It dried off and got warm all at the ideal time in November making our first fully organic vintage easy to manage.  It looked as if it was going to get really hot again but the first heat wave in late December only reached 38 degrees not the 42 forecast and that’s the hottest it got. It remained a coolish and dry summer setting a perfect and large crop.  It seemed to take forever to harvest, 8 weeks in total, but the fruit was ripening slowly giving us plenty of time to get things right in the winery.  A special vintage that definitely makes up for the previous year’s hardships.

Winemaking

We utilize traditional winemaking practices that are labour intensive but within a modern understanding of its ways. The grapes from the four different varieties were destemmed, lightly crushed into separate small open fermenters and naturally fermented using their own naturally occurring yeasts for an average of 12 days. The wine is then transferred via gravity (to avoid pump shock) to French oak barriques (approximately 20% new) and left to mature for approximately 18 months. Prior to bottling the separate varieties are carefully blended to produce a balanced wine.