This wine is fun in a bottle. Juicy, fruity, spicy and zippy. Notes of sour orange, tangerine, clove, all spice, bubble gum and cotton candy all blend together to make this wine a blast to enjoy.
This wine was packed whole cluster into a fermentation vessel, all oxygen was removed, CO2 was added, and Blair walked away for 5 days. When he came back he tasted from the bottom of the tank for a few days and when he decided it was done he pressed it off and aged it in neutral French oak for a few months.
225 cases produced
2021 Guthrie Heirloom Carbonic Grenache
$28.00
An awesome historic vineyard in Mendocino which was originally planted in the 1920s, Venturi vineyard rests at about 700 feet elevation in Calpella, CA. Larry, the third generation of Tuscanian-descended grape growers in California, farms the head trained vines organically and without irrigation. The Grenache is Clone A, born of Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape by way of Tablas Creek Vineyard.
From Blair about Carbonic fermentation:
“I packed the berries, whole cluster into tank and sealed it up. We take all the 02 out of it with C02 gas. We walk away for five days to let it go through carbonic fermentation. The rule of thumb is that it’s three to seven days roughly, but I do I keep the tank a little bit colder so it would carry on it would go through faster than that if it was at cellar temp. I keep it a little bit colder just because I am paranoid about having VA issues. I taste it. I pull little pieces off the bottom valve every day. I’ve done this for a number of years now, I can tell that it’s gone through carbonic. It’s just got this different thing. It’s not like normal fermentation. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s a weird latex character that I get on palette. That for me is the carbonic right there. It’s happened. It’s finished. Once I get that note, I’ll get up and I’ll open the lid out, grab a cluster, I close the lid back up and jump down and then pop open the berries. You can see inside the berry if it’s bled into the pulp. So, if it hasn’t gone through carbonic the pulp is still going to be an intact berry. It’s going to be exactly like it was when it went in there. If it’s gone through carbonic or partially through carbonic, you’ll see the anthocyanins from the skins instead.”
I love the character of carbonic. It is such a liberating style of wine to drink and make. I’m making so much Napa Cab during harvest that like carbonic is party time.
I have always been an artist. For me, wine is just another platform for me to create stuff.