Nose
Explosively aromatic, this wine is alive with notes of nectarine, passion fruit, litchee, tangerine, fresh rose petal and lime zest.
Palate
On the palate, the texture is opulent and refined, filled with fruit and the mouth-coating texture that typifies this grape variety. Either way, it’s a pleasure in a glass, any time of year, and with all types of food!
Growing Conditions
The 2017 growing season yielded a light crop that ripened to perfection in last season’s surprising heat. While it’s often been said that our Viognier is a wonderful summer wine (and it is), to oversimplify it in this way is to sell this serious wine short. Years of experimentation in the vineyard and trials in the cellar have resulted in just the right balance between richness and verve. Spend some time contemplating its complexity or simply enjoy it with friends.
Harvest
Three blocks of viognier were hand-picked at night on September 11th, 16th and 22nd (well before the October fires).
Bottling
Bottled: February 2018
Winemaking
The grapes were immediately pressed to stainless steel vat, where the juice was chilled and then racked to neutral French oak barrels (five to eight years in age) for fermentation. Malolactic fermentation was prevented in order to maintain a balanced natural acidity in this grape that by nature tends towards a higher pH.
Aging
Sur-lies aging was done for three months before the individual wines were racked back to tank, blended and bottled.