RZN Clairette Blanche Nolan Ranch Vineyard 2022

Description

The “Love Letters” Issue

Wet stones, slightly under ripe tangerine, tea leaves, prickly pear

Alc. 12% by vol.

The Vintage:

Overall we saw a cool and moderate growing season, which ran until September. At the the beginning of September there was a tropical storm near Baja Mexico, and it created a heat/ humidity wave that stuck around for a week. This kept the temp and moisture up higher than normal. With Clairette being a Rhone varietal, we feel it helped weather the heat decently. Minimal damage was noticeable on the fruit and yields were super good. Being our first vintage, we can only wait to see what this varietal has in store.

The Process:

The grapes were hand harvested at night and brought to the winery in the early morning of October 3rd. We dump the fruit into the bladder press and run the press cycle for 3 hours. The pressed juice is pumped directly to a steel tank and settles for two days. It is racked to neutral French oak barrels for fermentation. We let the juice naturally ferment over the course of 5-6 weeks. Around the three week mark, we consolidate the barrels and fill them up completely. From here we top every two weeks and let the wine evolve. The wine is then racked super clean to tank on Jan 29th, then bottled unfined and unfiltered on Jan 30th. We added minimal SO2 just prior to bottling to lock in the freshness.