I would not normally describe Verdelho as a serious wine. But this is. 

Honestly, my notes on this one speak for themselves: 

This smells like the ocean and rain at the same time. Lemon, lemon curd, honeydew, lime, honey, lanolin, white flowers, beeswax, brioche, fun and bright and still food friendly, floral white flowers. Killer texture- soft and broad.

This wine is naturally fermented in french oak vessels of various sizes and aged on the lees for about 6 months. Racked before bottling. 

2020 Birdhorse Borden Ranch Verdelho

$27.00

Corinne – This is from the Gordon Ranch down in Lodi, which sits on a band of Redding gravelly clay loam soil that’s basically a 20 mile wide fan that runs from Chico all the way down to Bakersfield. It is a very specific kind of soil. I think one of the things that we loved about Verdelho when Katy worked with it in South Africa, and then coming back and working with it is it’s the kind of grape where if we just fermented it in stainless steel and didn’t do anything new, it would make a perfectly adequate white wine, it would be fine. But we took a lens to it and I think this is much more of a winemaker’s grape. It falls in the Chardonnay camp where it’s got great bones to hold structure, it has great acid, it can take some phenolics. But this all takes a little bit of coaxing, and some thought and intervention on its way.

Katie – So a method that I had seen before, and is used in some places in Burgundy, for Chardonnay is pre fermentation hyper oxidation of the juice. So pumping over the juice to incorporate a ton of oxygen and crash out a lot of the browning agents. But at the same time, you’re also building a lot of texture and weight on the palate of the juice as it then pushes through fermentation, also for native fermentation this is helpful for adding a lot of oxygen for the yeast once they take off. So we pump the juice over until it starts fermenting. You know sometimes it takes a couple of days, sometimes it takes a whole week, which is kind of terrifying. I mean, we know it’s going to go through and it builds so much more structure to the wine when it is finished.

Corinne – We’ve gotten Verdelho every year and we will continue to for 2021. In 2018, we purchased from a vineyard in Contra Costa, Tom Morgan. It’s his retirement project essentially, in his backyard. Then we went and bought from Marcus for 19 and 20. They sold the vineyard, so we weren’t able to get it again this year so we went back to Tom Morgan in Contra Costa.

Katie – Tom, when we started working with him, was being salty on better farming practices. But he just retired and has gotten a lot of feedback and push from his smaller growers or producers as he’s started selling to a lot smaller clients, to be more sustainable and convert to organics, which he has. So that’s been a really fun circle back. 

Corinne – Tom is the quintessential grumpy old farmer. Every time I call him on the phone, he’s like, “Well, this year I’m doing it I’m getting out of the bulldozer getting rid of those vines, the chainsaw, or the bulldozer or something are all calling me, I was just out there with the shovel getting the weeds out of your block.” He’ll complain no one ever comes to help him, and then we offer to go help him and he doesn’t actually want that. He’s just a farmer, it’s great. 

 

We're on a break!

Don’t worry. We are coming back better than ever in 2024!

While Ownroot Collective  will continue to focus on winemaker side-projects, we will now offer 4 shipments per year, shipped automatically.

You can still shop for wine any time, and we will still offer lots of content, connection, and virtual tastings with winemakers. 

We hope you will join us for our newest adventure! 

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