This wine is electric with boysenberry and lingonberry on the nose. It carries a light and nuanced body of black tea, black pepper, coriander and mustard seed. This wine is tart and clingy, begging you to stick around for more, brambly and woodsy, wild and gamey. Drink this with cassoulet and thank me.
This wine was fermented natively with whole cluster. It enjoyed mostly pumpovers, was aged in neutral french oak for 10 months, with one racking in there to get get it off the lees and one racking a month before bottling. It is unfined and unfiltered, so vegan. 48 cases produced.
2021 Perch Syrah
$28.00
“If I remember correctly, the reason why the town of Volcano was named that is because in the morning, fog would roll over the hills upward. It looked like smoldering smoke out of a volcano. I got a half-ton of Syrah in ‘19. I got a ton in ‘20. I got a ton in ‘21. Yields were low last year because of frost in the foothills, so I got a half ton and then Carol called me and said, “Hey, there’s another half-ton left out there but you’ll have to pick yourself.” So I did. I ended up with a ton last year by the skin of my teeth. I feel like I’m maxed out at a ton in that vineyard. So it’s always going to be a low production wine for me, which is fine, beggars can’t be choosers. And I’m happy to get whatever I can from there.
I tend to do mostly pump overs. I’m not dogmatic about that. I’m not religious about that. I actually introduced more punch downs this year and I think that it might have made the wine better. I might do 50/50 moving forward. I have a small wooden basket press that fits about a half-ton of fermented must. That always gets pressed off in that wooden basket press. There’s obviously something special about basket pressed wines. They’re just a different thing.
Everything is usually 10 months in barrel. That’s just out of necessity again, that’s cash flow, time based cash flow, you know. Also, there’s no new wood, there’s no big harsh tannins to resolve. There’s actually no reason for me to over vintage them. They drink really nice young. It would be sort of following some other person’s formula and that’s not what these wines are about.”