2005 Old Vines Reserve Zinfandel

• Old vines over 55 years
• Green fruit thinned at veraison
• Hand sorted before crush
• Whole berry fermentation
• Open top fermented
• French, Hungarian and American cooperage
• Harvested at 26+ brix
• 1 Week cold soak at 50 F
• OH 15.9%
• 485 cases produced

Another Big Zin! Catch it while you can – the 2004 sold out quickly. The fruit comes exclusively from our old-vine, high elevation vineyard in Cloverdale at the northern end of the Mayacama Mountain range at 1,100 foot elevation. The vineyard is interplanted with small amounts of Petite Sirah (probably around 3 to 4%), is mostly dry farmed and has a modified head pruned trellis system. The fruit is carefully hand sorted before it is destemmed and then placed in the fermenter as whole berries. A long cold soak at 50 degrees was followed by a slow fermentation that was allowed to progress with it’s natural yeast at a slow and steady rate and then half way through the fermentation it was inoculated with a strong yeast isolate (L2226) to finish the job. The wine was aged in Hungarian, French and American cooperage at a rate of 30% new oak. This wine is very aromatic with briary aromas of blackberry, raspberry, cherry and chocolate. This is a concentrated and juicy mouthful of wine! It has a mouth-coating forward palate bursting with fruit and a long, lingering finish.