Notes from the Winery
Spring 2010
|
FEATURED
VINTAGE: Full flavored and refreshingly crisp, our Sauvignon Blanc is the perfect white wine for warm weather. The Muscat clone of Sauvignon Blanc lends a subtle floral overtone, while the dominant flavors of melon and citrus make it incredibly versatile with food. We celebrated its long-awaited release on May 16th by pairing it with a baby fava bean, rock shrimp and goat cheese tortilla espanol, which was wonderful. This wine also pairs nicely with simple grilled fish or chicken and can stand up to a fresh pesto as well. Be sure to stock up on the 2009 Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc for summer entertaining while it lasts. |
FARMER'S CORNER: Jason Passalacqua
The next time you head our way for a visit, notice our picturesque Estate Vineyard to the left of the parking lot as you are driving in. This one and a half acre vineyard provides the grapes for our Estate Zinfandel and is a prized part of our winery on Lambert Bridge Road. Spending time in this vineyard, pruning its vines and examining its progress, has become a beloved pastime for me. I have enjoyed watching the vineyard mature, and am excited about the changes we are making to bring about its full potential.
Beyond keeping the vineyard healthy and productive, I have been continually working on practices that create the optimum fruit for our Estate label: concentrated, with deep berry flavor and color; and complex, revealing many layers of flavor. Obtaining this type of fruit comes from stressing the vines and making them struggle for water and other nutrients, so that small berry sizes (the flavor is in the skin) and more concentrated flavors are attained.
This site's deep light loam soil makes it difficult to stress the vines, especially in this wet spring. For some different farming ideas, I brought in Mike Saini (who grows our Sangiovese) for a consultation. With his farming-technique ideas in mind, we changed our pruning practices to leave more spurs and buds on the vine. This makes the vine spend more energy in growing more canes, leaves and bunches of grapes. After bloom and fruit set, we will go through the vineyard and cut off one cane per spur, leaving one to two canes per spur to be the focus of all that energy. Once the fruit starts ripening, turning from green to purple (called verasion), we will once again go into the vineyard, but this time we will drop bunches of fruit, leaving one bunch per cane. These things, along with leaving the soil in the vineyard rows untouched so that the vines compete for water and nutrients with the grasses and other vegetation, stress the vines just enough to intensify the fruit's flavor profile.
As well as taking advantage of the natural site, and employing specific farming practices to give optimal flavor and concentration to our Estate fruit, we have also interplanted with Petite Sirah to add a layer of complexity to the finished wine. Our goal is to replace about 5% of the vineyard with Petite Sirah, which is a time-honored way of adding 'backbone' to the field blend, with its color, tannin, blackberry flavors and notes of pepper and spice.
We are very proud of our Estate vineyard and the wine it produces. I hope you enjoyed the sample of the 2007 Estate Zinfandel in your last Wine Club selection. If you have not already purchased more, there are less than 20 cases of our 2007 Estate Vineyard Zinfandel remaining, so secure yours now. We will begin our summer party, An Affair with Zinfandel, in the Estate vineyard so you can see first hand how the 2010 fruit is maturing, and enjoy the natural beauty of this integral part of the Passalacqua estate.
SPRING SAMPLINGS
Spring is the season for futures at Passalacqua Winery, with some memorable wine country occasions to discover vintages awaiting their debut. In April, we opened up our cellar for Passport to Dry Creek Valley, where guests sampled from the barrels and enjoyed wood-fired pizzas and Olives Ascolane, specialties of our Passport destination of Umbria. The old world ambiance was the perfect setting to both feature barrel samplings and unveil our 2007 Dry Creek Valley Saini Farms Sangiovese. This wine comes from the Saini Family's vineyards right down the road from us, and it is an intensely jammy wine with a delightful, food-friendly level of acidity. With only 117 cases made, this wine doesn't last long past its spring release and doesn't even make the tasting list. Guests at Passport loved it and you can still purchase the 2007 Dry Creek Valley Saini Farms Sangiovese online, while it lasts.
What do you get when you blend our Sangiovese, with its intense fruit, with the structure of TR Passalacqua Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon? You get a rich and racy wine we call Radici della Famiglia, or “roots of the family”. We shared a special pour of Radici della Famiglia Due, our second vintage of this Super Tuscan blend, with our guests at Passport who enjoyed the opportunity to sample the Sangiovese and Cabernet separately, and to sample them perfectly blended into the Radici!
As Margaret says of the Radici, “We're very proud of this one-of-a-kind Dry Creek red wine. As is true with the best red blends, the sum delivers a much different wine than each component, and often a complex but accessible wine in its youth. The Radici owes its versatility with food to a combination of firm tannin of Cabernet with the lighter tannin and greater acidity of Sangiovese.” This is a wine that can be enjoyed alfresco with cheese (we served a Pecorino Romano), as well as with a range of entrees from burgers with blue cheese to spice-rubbed leg of lamb.
Since the first vintage of Radici della Famiglia sold out within weeks, we held some of the second back, so that it is available to you now. The Radici della Famiglia Due can be purchased online or by calling us at 877-825-5547. This wine, which celebrates the blending of Jason and Noelle's family heritages, is also a perfect wedding gift. Call us to arrange gift shipment.
We hope you will join us next spring for special wines like these, limited-time futures opportunities, and to enjoy our rustic Italian atmosphere with your family and friends!
(Note: Passport in 2011 will be April 30-May 1. See www.wdcv.com)
WINEMAKER'S NOTES: Margaret Davenport
Finally
I see the sun and temperatures are trending higher but dare we call
it summer? We have endured what must be one of the wettest winter-spring
seasons in Sonoma County history, but gardeners and vineyard managers
are delighted to see vigorous growth again (except for the weeds!)
and enough water to banish talk of drought. Cluster counts look
normal to high at the beginning of June and we are starting to see
bloom in Zinfandel, though several weeks later than usual, due to
the cooler and wetter spring. With warm weather the vines can quickly
catch up so that harvest will occur at roughly the same period for
each vineyard every year. I wish I had a crystal ball!
The weather is also affecting the coopers, already frustrated by the Euro devaluation and decreasing demand for French oak. Many winemakers are being cautious about ordering barrels for the 2010 vintage until bloom is over and grapes are truly set. Only then can the crop be predicted with any degree of certainty. Early orders for French oak barrels used to be the rule, and still are for the boutique coopers like Taransaud (Passalacqua Blocks 18&19 Cabernet) and Fouquet (specialty barrels made for our Block Select Cabs and Heirloom Zin). Overall barrel demand has fallen, as many large wineries have turned to oak barrel 'alternatives,' like oak chips in stainless wine tanks, to keep costs down while adding color stability and flavor to mass produced varietals. At Passalacqua Winery, we continue to use barrels for the enhancement of our wines, and look very closely at the nuances of each cooperage to match them up with the fruit profiles of each individual vineyard. All of our barrel orders will be in by the end of June so that delivery will occur in time for crush.
Summer is a satisfying time to spend in the wine cellar. All the wines have finished malo-lactic fermentation, have been racked as vineyard lots, and have integrated oak and fruit flavors. This simply means they're great to taste while routinely topping barrels, and great to drink! It's also easier to conceptualize the finishing touches that each wine might need before bottling. The 2009 vintage had a nice even pace for ripening, with no extreme temperature swings. All varietals achieved physiological ripeness rather than simple sugar or 'high brix' ripeness that can occur during hot spells. Therefore, we're leaving all the Zins and the Sangiovese and Primitivo in barrel for a few months longer to develop the full complexity and potential of this vintage.
Our current stable of Zinfandels, all vintage 2007, is showing quite well, each with its unique charm. The most accessible, easy quaffers are the Russian River (strawberry fruit, minty/menthol notes, light palate) and the Dry Creek Old Vine, with its pure raspberry fruit/red licorice flavors and long, smooth finish. By contrast, our biggest, richest Zin hails from the Heirloom Vineyard: cocoa, roasty oak with ripe raspberry/cherry fruit. Big, chewy tannins highlight the Estate Zin, unique for its deep raspberry/blackberry fruit and deep plummy flavors. One of my favorites is the Primitivo from Lavender Hill. High above Dry Creek Valley, this little vineyard produces pure raspberry and black pepper flavors and always has great acidity. Our Zin for Pinot fanciers is the elegant blend of Zin and Petite Sirah from the Maple Vineyard: dried cherry and toasty Burgundian oak. Last but not least is the Viti della Nebbia, our cool climate Zin. A pure expression of mixed berry and the subtle toast of the best American oak barrels, the Viti smells lean and racy but delivers a full, luscious red, hard candy fruit by mouth.
Enjoy all of these Zins this summer and drop by the winery during the harvest season to see how the 2010 vintage is shaping up.
INTO
THE CELLAR WITH JASON:
What to enjoy now
Spring
is the time to open the cellar doors, rediscover treasures, and
pull out what is ready to drink. For optimal enjoyment of Passalacqua
wines, here are a few tips:
Whites - if you have any Sauvignon Blancs from 2008 or before, drink them now! We just released the 2009 Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc and it is tasting beautifully, so you'll want to stock up on the new vintage.
Zinfandels - if you have any 2005's or earlier, enjoy them now, at their peak. The 2006's are cellaring very well and will continue to do so for the next one to two years, so move them to where they are handy for your next Zinfandel opportunity. The 2005 and 2006 Maple Vineyard Zinfandels are excellent choices if they are part of your collection. Pull them out for your summer occasions and share these esteemed wines with friends.
Cabernets - if you are fortunate enough to have cellared the 2002, it is superb right now, as is the 2003. We are sold out of the 2002 and 2003 and have very limited amounts of the next two vintages remaining. Replenish your cellar with the 2006, which is our current release of the Cabernet Sauvignon. These 2006 Cabs will cellar for 10-20 years, so you will enjoy them for many seasons to come.
Enjoy your spring cleaning (and sipping!) in preparation for all the new releases in the fall, and be sure to let us know what you discovered!
Salute!
