Fabulous Harvest 11/16

Overall a fabulous harvest, our wines are fantastic and have great potential all around. All are characterized by excellent prominent varietal aromas and flavors and very very nice phenolics great mouth feel and presentation, excellent mid palate and generally very good to excellent and long finish. None are over-extracted and the alcohol levels, should run in the low to mid 15's. Acidity levels seem very good in the mouth, clean fruity characteristics, not tutti - fruity, more jammy with nice " freshness ".

Fermenation update:

Wine terminology clarification - Malolctic fermentation convert Malic Acid to Lactic Acid in doing so directly influencing wine quality related to starting alcohol, ph and malic acid levels impacting overall mouth-feel, aroma and flavor.  Malolactic fermentation often is said to generate sensory impression such as buttery, vanilla- like, fruity vegetative, nutty fuller and rounder. 

The malolactics on the zins have made good progress, the pinots have gone completely.  I expect the SB has done a little malo, even at the very cold temps some malo is likely to happen. It adds a bit of mouthfeel and takes a little edge off the acidity so I think it's a good thing.

Petite Sirah is nothing short of magnificent at this point and is easily the " biggest " statement. I hesitate calling it the " Flagship " because that is based on certain criteria, but if the criteria is unnaturally fruit forward jammy blackberry blueberry mouthful that is also luscious with a finish that goes for minutes.............. then I guess that would make it a flagship ! Can't wait to get this in some really nice wood, WOW !

The zins are really attractive and doing very well in the wood. Virtually all of them and can show the progression in " richness " in the wood choices they're in.

SB is I think really nice, great citrus pineapple, pear finish. The pear should be much more noticeable after I bentonite it and let it settle. It will also show just a bit more sweetness cleaned up but I will let it continue a little past that point and should end up with final sugars closer to 0.7 - 0.8% at bottling, almost dry.

It's Over ! 10/29

10/29/2012

Harvest is officially over as of today at noon when the last 3 bins of pinot from Torres arrived at the Torres crush pad. The fruit made its way to Valdez by 1400 hours.
 
In summary, although we have a couple small batches not finished / finishing, the vast majority of the lots look smell and taste pretty much as our wine maker had hoped they would. for our first year we all should be quite pleased with the characteristics of all the wines. We really look forward to getting the rest to barrels and then immediately begin to " elevate " them to what I think will be a very very attractive lineup of wines. We've learned quite a bit the first year working with the vineyards and have ideas where we can improve, and the wines are all in a very good starting position, some already have a " finished " character that is charming already.