Variety: 100% Sauvignon Blanc
Location: Contra Costa County, CA
Alcohol: 12%
Production: 450 cases

Always flirting with tropicality, this year’s Sauvignon channels mango blossom and passionfruit before committing to grapefruit pith and lemon verbena, all enveloped in a texture that recalls the variety’s Loire Valley heritage. Snappy, irrepressible, and unstoppably bright!

Most of the grapes were foot tread and left to soak shortly before going into the press. After about a week much of the wine was racked to neutral French oak, while some of the juice was fermented and raised entirely in plastic flex tanks. A significant portion of the fruit was also fermented on its skins for a few weeks like a red wine, and this wine was pressed to age in a mix of new and used acacia barrels. No inoculations, nor blocking of malolactic fermentation. A small amount of sulfur (25ppm) was added when the lots were combined before bottling.

Grown in the wind-blown sand and weathered clay soils of Oakley and Knightsen. Warm, often hot days, and evenings cooled by regular winds from Suisun Bay and the delta confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, make for an early sauvignon blanc harvest in northern California. The vines were planted in the early 1990s, and our block is farmed without synthetic chemicals.