Grapes: Muscat Canelli
Region: Lake County, California
Vintage: 2023
Viticulture: Certified Organic
Soils: Alluvial + Gravel
Vinification: Destemmed to bins, 7 day maceration, gently punched down each day until tannins begin to materalize, pressed into neutral french oak barrels for fermentation
Aging: 6 months in neutral french oak
Fining or Filtering: None
Sulfur: None added
Notes from the Importer: Most of the skin-contact wines we drink from California end up being sort of an illusion. What you see in glass is something that looks super refreshing; the kind of wine you want on a hot day, but what you end up getting is something super tannic. We wanted to make a skin-contact wine that tasted as refreshing as what it looked like in the glass.
Muscat was an easy choice for this. It grows really well in CA, it’s skin is naturally orange so you can achieve the “orange” hue with shorter macerations (which means less tannin), and its aromatics & acidity immediately check off that refreshing quality that we’re looking for. Using the mixture of direct press and maceration allowed us to have some freedom with how long we let the maceration go. Also, having direct press Muscat came in handy topping up some of our other cuvees - something we learned from Alain Castex.
This wine reminds us of some Southern French expressions of this grape. Think Le Petit Domaine de Gimios.
