Nose
Characters of coffee, chocolate and berries.
Palate
Flavors of plum, blackberry and tootsie roll dominate the palate, with balanced and structured acid and fine-grained tannins.
Growing Conditions
This vineyard has always displayed an intense concentration of flavors due, in part, to the minuscule yields we receive.
The Bridgehead Vineyard was chosen for the 2019 Late Harvest Mourvedre. This ancient vineyard is planted in deep sandy soil and dry farmed and benefits from the drying winds that blow through Contra Costa County. The vineyard carries a light crop, and as a result, it ripens and then dehydrates to a high sugar content without rotting. Each cluster contained some raisins, and by the time the grapes arrived at the winery, the lot was 25% raisined.
Harvest
10/1/19
Winemaking
We were working with ultra-ripe, and raisiny fruit that made this delicious wine had its challenges. The yield of concentrated grape juice from these dehydrated berries was about half of what we attained from the grapes we used to make our Mourvedre table wines. The initial sugar reading indicated about 29 degrees Brix (% soluble solids), but as the grapes steeped in their juices, the sugar levels increased each day until they arrived at 37.0 degrees Brix.
