WINEMAKING / TASTING NOTES
None of our sweet wines have any added sugar to them, which is not typical in America. We captured all of the residual sugar in this wine by filtering the wine during fermentation to remove the yeasts. This allows the natural sweetness of the wine grapes to provide clean, delicious sweetness up front, without a sugary aftertaste! All fruit, all of the time! Fermentation is done very cold which not only helps us maintain the sugar levels to exactly what we want by fermenting the juice very cold, but cold fermentation also helps capture the very fruity essences in the wine. The resulting wine contains sweetness from fructose and not glucose, which helps us provide a much lower calorie wine for you. Check out our blog site to see why we don’t add sugar.
Catawba can be considered “The Original” American grape variety for winemaking. It’s very distinctively fruity and for me a little spicy too. A little history time. The Catawba grape was found in the woods of Pennsylvania in the 1600s. Not so recent, but recent enough DNA studies show that it is a cross of the French grape Semillion (Vitus Vinifera) and American Vitus Riparia. Grapes of the genus (Vitus) can mate and create hybrid varieties. Vitus Riparia is low in sugar and not quite tasty for making wine. Vitus Vinifera cannot grow nearly anywhere in the world anymore due to the spread of a nematode called phylloxera, which eats the grape roots. Riparia vines and hybrids of Riparia have a protective bark on their roots. Phylloxera originated in America but made its way to Europe in the 1700s due to commerce. Nearly everywhere, Vinifera varieties are grafted onto Riparia or other American grape variety rootstocks. I digressed big time in describing this wine. Sorry.
Our catawba is a blend from our vineyard of two weeks of harvest which adds complexity. Flavors common to this variety are apple, cherrry, date, lemon, lime, mango, white grape among others. Just a dandy, with nice, crisp acidity rounding out the long and lingering flavors
WINE SPECS
Vintage 2022 | Varietal Catawba | Appellation: Indiana Uplands AVA, Turtle Run Vineyards
Acid 0.84 | PH 3.42 | Alcohol 9.5%
Aging stainless steel
Price: $14 per bottle