This wine is our attempt at crafting a classic balanced and age-worthy red wine—wine like the wines produced and collected around the world when people like Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill wouldn’t have dinner without a bottle of Claret. Old school age-worthy wine with finesse but with guts, and complete with a beginning, middle, and end.
The blend is 60 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 30 percent Merlot, 6 percent Petit Verdot, and 4 percent Cabernet Franc.
The fruit was fermented at low temperatures in small, open-top tanks and punched down by hand one to three times per day, depending on how the wine tasted during the fermentations. Maceration was 18-24 days. The wine was partially co-fermented (fermented together as one lot), and the remainder racked and blended before malolactic fermentation, so that the wine could marry from the very beginning—much magic happens during fermentation, and co-fermenting can create a seamless wine in a way that doesn’t always happen with blending after the fact.
- Mattiasson