The Wine
This Carignane, produced from old vines grown in the heart of inland Mendocino County, balaces a fruity foreground with a complex savory character and bright acidity. Primary fruit aromas of black raspberries and ripe blueberries take center stage, with white pepper, green cardamom, thyme, raspberry leaf and rose aromas providing complexity. The flavors are rich and ripe, but fresh acidity and moderate tannins frame the wine's good structure, providing finesse and ensuring good pairings with food.
Vineyard
Planted in 1942 and tended since the early 1970s by the Colombini family, these head-trained Carignane vines produce low yields of deeply-colored grapes. The Carignane variety is native to the Roussillon in southern France; while the grape is widespread in California, it is only infrequently seen as a varietal wine. These vines, sitting on a benchland site at 900 feet of elevation and well-settled with deep, long-lived roots, generate a tremendous amount of flavor and retain their acidity throughout the growing season, helping to build a wine with balance and complexity.
Winemaking
3.29 tons were destemmed without crushing and fermented in small ¾-ton T-bins. The bins were allowed to use their native yeasts to carry out fermentation, which lasted for 18 days. Each bin was given two punch-downs every day in order to gently extract flavor and color, pressed off prior to complete dryness, and allowed to finish fermentation in barrel. The 2013 matured for 11 months in oak barrels, with one new American oak barrel (11% of the total) joining 8 neutral barrels. The 2013 Carignane was bottled on October 5th, 2014 and was neither fined nor filtered prior to bottling.
