HARVESTED: August 29th – September 24th, 2013
VINEYARD LOCATION: Portola Valley, Saratoga, La Honda on either clay or sandy loam soils.
BOTTLED: November, 2014
COMPOSITION: 100% Pinot Noir (Dijon clones 114, 115, 117, 666, 667, 777)
ALCOHOL: 13.8%
PRODUCTION: 663 cases
WINEMAKER: Colin McNany
NAME: ‘sequence’ of vineyards’ along Skyline, and part of Silicon Valley’s vines/science heritage.
VINTAGE NOTES
A warm, dry spring brought early bud break, helped with canopy vigor and berry size and created ideal conditions for flowering and fruit set under sunny skies. Temperatures were consistently in the zone for optimal vine activity, resulting in notably healthy vines as fruit went through veraison and started ripening. The August 1 start of harvest in Napa was the earliest in recent history, however, Santa Cruz was roughly 2 weeks behind, which put us slightly earlier than schedule, dependent on site. A little extra hang time gave us thicker skins for deeper flavours.
WINEMAKING NOTES
We harvest our Pinot Noir sequentially with co-fermentation in mind, filling open top tanks and Tbins with vineyards matching fruit profiles. All fruit is 100% de-stemmed whole berry, and hand sorted on the shaker table. It is then tipped into 2 ton open top tanks and 1 ton bins. Then cold soaking to enhance flavor and color, roughly 35 days, followed by inoculation of commercial yeast strains. The ferments are punched down by hand 3 times a day with peak fermentation temps hitting roughly 90 degrees F. The wine is left on skins for a total of 2025 days via extended maceration. We press on taste, separating free run and basket pressed wine into designated French and Hungarian barrels, which ⅓ are new. The wine undergoes 100% native malolactic, receiving light batonnage, and aged for 14 months. Unfined and unfiltered, always.
TASTING NOTES
Beautiful bright red fruits; elegant aromatics of fresh pomegranate blueberry seeds and enticing earthtones of strawberry rhubarb pie. The wine brings medium acid to the palette with juicy rose petals, cherry cola, and dark cacao nib tannin.
CELLARING
Recommend aging potential is 3-7 years.