Story from winemaker Andrew Jones
“In late August of 2018 I had to go to France to see my colleagues from the grapevine nursery in the south of France. We import all of the grapevine material we propagate at the nursery from France’s grapevine library just south of Montpellier. Think of it as having that show dog with an insane pedigree, but for us it’s a certain type of Cabernet or Syrah vine.
Beyond studying grapevines at the library, we spent a few days touring around with the agriculture extension advisors in other parts of the south of France. The highlight of those field trips was an excursion to the northern Rhone valley and specifically Crozes Hermitage. It’s the flat area across the river from the historical Hermitage vineyard on the hill. For the northern Rhone this is the workhorse wine production area. They only grow Syrah there and in the rocky, gravelly ground, it produces this rustic but refreshing table wine that I have become infatuated with ever since. The showier wines from the hills surrounding are also amazing, but I am looking to make wine that costs less than 40 bucks. I’m not the kind of guy to make trophy bottles.
The rocky flatlands really reminded me of the Arroyo Seco in Monterey and there is no vineyard in the region with less rock than the Zabala piece. Zabala is planted at the end of the Arroyo Seco area right where the old river bottom fans out. When we plant vineyards there we have to use digging bars rather than shovels to break up the rock to squeeze the vines into the ground. There is a small block of Syrah there that I always knew existed but had not had the wine before. I thought it would be worth a shot to see if they would pinch off a little fruit for me to try my hand at making this syrah that I had put on a pedestal.
We purchased a few bins of two separate clones from the block on the same day. The 470 was 2 full brix riper than the 174 and we thought they would compliment each other well. We kept ⅓ of the clusters intact and put them in a tank for a 7 day cold soak. After the chilling, we pumped the juice over only twice daily. I didn’t want to over extract the flavors. After a 3 week fermentation it went to barrel to rest until it was bottled June 30th without any fining and just a light filtration.”
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