2024 Heringer Chenin Blanc

Nose of lemon meringue pie, lime pith, honeysuckle and ginger. Medium body with present acidity and mid-palate weight. Notes of chamomile tea, orange blossom, yellow apple and allspice. SR (3/25)

Clarksburg has come to be recognized as a prime location in California to grow chenin blanc. Warm days are cooled by an afternoon breeze from the southwest, carrying brisk air from the Pacific Ocean. Brief skin contact helped extract compounds that enhance exotic aromas in the finished wine. Excellent now, this fine wine will be at its best over the next four years. SR (2/25)

100% Sustainably Grown in Clarksburg, California, in the beautiful Sacramento River Delta Region. Since 1868 the Heringer family has cultivated this region with row crops: alfalfa, corn, sugar beets, and tomatoes. They planted their first wine grapes in the 1970s and have expanded the vineyard operations to hundreds of acres. Their viticultural practices encourage the highest quality wine grapes at harvest including deficit irrigation, shoot thinning, leaf pulling, fruit thinning, herbicide free farming and rotating seasonal cover crops.

Rainfall: 42 inches (above normal)
Bloom: Early June
Weather: A hot July and August brought harvest two weeks early.

Harvest Date: 13 September
Grapes: Average Brix 23.1˚
Fermentation: Natural primary and natural secondary (malolactic) fermentations.
Barrels: 100% air-dried American oak barrels (10% new and 90% five-plus years old).
Aging: Six months in barrel

Sustainably farmed, hand-harvested, grapes; whole-cluster pressed; fermented on the native yeasts, followed by a full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria; minimum effective sulfur for this wine (35 ppm at crush, 87 ppm over the course of aging); pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.

Wine Advocate: 92 Points “The 2024 Chenin Blanc Heringer is dry and electric, though it offers rich textural breadth due to a brief period of skin contact; Lytton Springs winemaker Shauna Rosenblum and assistant winemaker Michael Bairdsmith decided to do skin contact overnight to add texture and tropical character to the wine. Matured for six months in 10% new air-dried American oak, it has dramatically unfurling scents of dried apples, lime pith, lemon verbena, chamomile and beeswax. Medium-bodied, it floods the mouth with waves of honeyed orchard fruit. It’s foiled by a crescendo of racy acidity that lures you back for another sip, and its mouth-coating texture drives a very long, spicy finish.” -Erin Brooks (September 2025)

Average Rating: 92.3

No. of Tasting Notes: 3

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