2016 Heritage Zinfandel

Aromas of raspberry, licorice and vanilla. Lively acid with elegant tannins and fig and black cherry fruit. JO (2/19)

This wine comes from a site in Oakville planted by the University of California at Davis in collaboration with ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates and Producers) and contains nineteen different selections from California’s most renowned zinfandel vineyards. The vineyard was established to research and preserve these historic selections. This zinfandel will be most enjoyable over the next four to five years.

Researchers at the University of California at Davis established the Heritage Vineyard out of an interest in old-vine zinfandel. It is three acres consisting of 90 selections from 50 vineyards in 14 counties, located at the University’s Research Station in Oakville, California, in Napa Valley. Each vine is head-trained and spur-pruned in the “goblet” shape, as they would have been in the nineteenth century.

Rainfall: 17 inches (below average)
Bloom: Mid-May
Weather: A wet December and January helped ease the drought which emphatically ended in March. Cool weather in April reduced our crop a bit. Harvest started late August and finished in early September.

Harvest Date: 24 August
Grapes: Average Brix 24.5˚
Fermentation: Natural primary and secondary for ten days in small fermentors
Barrels: 100% air-dried american oak barrels (20% new, 20% one year old, 20% two years old, and 40% three years old.)
Aging: Twelve months in barrel

Hand-harvested; destemmed and crushed; fermented on the native yeasts, followed by full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria; minimum effective sulfur for this wine (35 ppm at crush, 74 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.

Average Rating: 86.9

No. of Tasting Notes: 23

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