Rather than rewrite genius, these are literally the tasting notes from our tasting:
Super bright tart cherry – really fresh and juicy
Candy and Jolly Rancher but not in a gross way, you know like that strawberry candy that is wrapped to look like a strawberry and has a gooey center, like that but in the best possible way
Watermelon aqua fresca
Slightly chilled, glou glou pairs well with avocado toast
Drink this in the shower float down a river
This is breakfast wine personified and all damn day
The grapes were destemmed and fermented using natural yeasts. Fermentation completed in ten days and the juice was pressed into neutral French oak barrels, where they sat untouched for nine months.
2020 Major Wine Valdiguié
$22.99
“Valdiguié (Napa Gamay)
I love this wine. I love the guy who farms it – Daniel Sinton – and the vineyard. I was at Field Recordings during harvest and it was one of those, “Daniel at Shell Creek has 2 tons of Valdiguié do you want it” moments. I have always loved Michael Cruse’s Valdiguié. So I said yes. It was juicer than I was hoping, but people I respected liked it a lot. But there was a sweet factor to it that I didn’t know what to do with, even though it had zero residual sugar. I tweaked it and now it is just where I want it to be.
Each year I have called the pick earlier and earlier.
They planted the vines in 1997, which was the year Daniel started working on his family’s vineyard so he has a real connection to the vines. In fact, they planted the vineyard and that night he left the gate open by accident and all their cows came in and ate all the new vines they had just planted. He got into a heap of trouble. But those little vines all came up anyway- incredible. They planted it as Napa Gamay, on their paperwork and everything. It was much later that they discovered it is Valdiguie.
It’s not related to Gamay at all. It used to be everywhere, Mondavi had Napa Gamay everywhere. But as soon as it had to be called Valdiguie they ripped it all up. After all these years, I think I was the second winemaker to make a still red wine off the vineyard and, I believe, it was the first time the family had ever tasted a 100% Valdiguié wine off their vineyard.”