Vin De Days Rouge

Grape Varietals: Pinot Noir (80%); Pinot Meunier (12%); Pinot Gris (8%)
Vineyards: Cassin, Claygate, Keleri, Momtazi, Left Coast
Final pH: 3.48
Final TA: 6.3 g/L
Alc. By Vol.: 13%

Winemaking: Ripening was slow and long which gave us the time to visit all of the sites multiple times and choose the perfect time to pick. Two-thirds whole-clusters were used for fermentation to build fruit and tannin, with the whole-clustered fruit on the bottom of each fermenter to allow for carbonic maceration. For this wine, we never once punched down the cap, but rather relied on pump-overs twice a day; this promotes a gentle extraction and a more fruit-centric wine. The wine was fermented in 1.5-ton Macro 48s and settled many times post fermentation, and prior to being put to barrel (neutral French oak). We pressed extremely gently, only getting up to 1 bar of pressure. This wine typically does not see any barrel time, but we used neutral barrels this year to keep all vineyards, varieties and press levels segregated allowing us us the ability to analyze each barrel individually and put together a very pretty and complete blend. The wine went through malolactic fermentation in barrel, then was racked to stainless steel tank for bottling.