This is not a light and juicy Carignan. This is deep with brooding blackberries and dark chocolate covered cherries, Santa Rosa plum, pomegranate, and boysenberry. On the palate there is texture and tannin, with fig compote and salty plum candy. I would blind this for a Paso Grenache, it even shows hallmarks of a new world Cabernet. This wine is rich and rustic and is holding a ton of acid, there is also a black tar tone that is cradled by big black and red fruit down the middle. This is a serious wine made from old vines that will taste even better as it gets another couple years on it.
This 2019 Old Vine Carignane was picked at 23.3 Brix. The fruit was fermented in oak fermenters for 17 days and then pressed off into neutral Burgundy barrels where it aged for 18 months. During this time they racked it once and a single dose of sulfur was also added. It was bottled in May 2021 unfined and unfiltered, so Vegan. No additional sulfur was added at bottling.
94 cases produced.
2019 Erggelet Brothers Carignane
$32.00
“The wines I have enjoyed the most, have always been wines that were made very carefully. And when I mean carefully, I don’t mean like, risk averse. Most winemaking is risk averse, right? It’s very safe. It’s controlled. You mitigate all risk by taking away the risk factors either through filtration or adding abundant amounts of extra to things. But the wines I enjoy the most were carefully made by experienced artisans that didn’t do all these things that I was taught are necessary because they knew their wines well enough, and knew how to set out along the way to avoid the pitfalls of when it becomes necessary to filter. Filtering is mostly convenient, you want to get the wine into the bottle sooner, so you filter it, but you’re also not letting the wine settle out naturally, letting the yeast die off naturally. This has a huge effect on the balance of the wine and the oxygen resilience of the wine. These winemakers weren’t calling themselves “natural winemakers.” These are classic names from Burgundy, and to some extent Germany. People who make wine like their grandfather’s. They make wines without filtration with very little to no sulfur, and with a lot of time, and a lot of focus. Those wines were coveted by mainstream wine drinkers, some are considered the best of the best, and yet those were natural wines. So there was always this dichotomy, that myth that I was curious about.”