WINEMAKING/TASTING NOTES
Mistakes! Adventure! Running out of inventory! Blending problems! Great Wine!
Let’s start with mistakes and adventures. And that would be catawba. I had excess in 2017, so much so that I was forced to barrel ferment some juice. Um…would you put peanut butter on salmon? Probably not, so an oaky catawba, though both good on their own is a clash in flavor as a wine. Top it off with the barrel having been inoculated with malolactic bacteria at some point and the recipe for a secondary “ml-softening” could be on the horizon. Okay, I surmised, I really don’t like this wine. It’s sound, but not satisfying.
In 2017, our vineyard got decimated by a 2-4D drift, wiping out 80% of our crop. I was in desperate need to save my dry white list, so I called my buddy grower in North East, PA, and asked if he had anything in cold storage. Yep, got this Chambourcin juice. Want some? Heck yeah. After fermentation, I found the wine to be too bitter and too acidic. Now what??
I have this barrel I hate and now I have a tank I dislike. I wonder if there is any potential to blend these together? Heck yes! It just needs something else, something else to soften just a bit more — enter colombard! And there are zero oak overtones even though two wines are fermented in oak.
This lovely Rose wine is pure innocent fruit. It just hits all the senses with great fruity notes.
WINE SPECS
Vintage 2019| Varietal Chambourcin, Catawba, Colombard | Appellation Turtle Run Vineyards, Indiana Uplands, North East PA, Lodi, CA
Acid 0.77 | PH 3.67 | Alcohol % 12.3% | Residual Sugar .0%
Price: $16 per bottle