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2005
MANDALA SYRAH
A compelling cuvee of 100% Syrah from the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Lucia Highlands. A wine Parker says has "...superb purity, an expressive style, and loads of soul and character."
2005
FAIRVIEW RANCH SYRAH
A new offering, this single vineyard bottling of Santa Lucia Highlands Syrah offers velvety mouthfeel along with seductive wildberry fruit. |
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| CURRENT
RELEASES |
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2005
RATTLESNAKE ROCK SYRAH
The long cool growing season set the stage for the most rockin Rattlesnake yet. Concentrated, strong mid palate, intense fruit and balanced.
2006
BRANCIFORTE RIDGE PINOT NOIR
A delicate, nuanced Pinot from the Santa Cruz Mountains with great mouthfeel, balance and structure. A limited production wine that will be made available only to our mailing list.
2007
SRI ROSE
Made from some very good Syrah grapes, this rosé has surprising weight and structure. We made only one barrel of this exotic and refreshing wine. |
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WINEMAKING
PHILOSOPHY
We believe in a style of winemaking that allows the fullest expression of the site and the particular vintage. To this end, we spend long hours in our vineyard to insure that the grapes we grow are of the best quality possible. We believe in and employ sustainable and organic farming practices. The steep hillsides, cooling ocean breezes and fog, and fractured mudstone soils promote the development of color and complex flavors. By keeping the yields very low and harvesting small sections of the vineyard at perfect ripeness, we strive to achieve the most important part of winemaking - great fruit. The winemaking
then becomes the art of
gently extracting what
the fruit has to offer.
We carefully destem the
fruit into small (one
ton) open top fermenters
where we cold soak the
whole berries. We rely
primarily on indigenous
yeast fermentations which
helps promote greater
complexity and depth in
the finished wine. |
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| Winemaker & Proprietor
Bradley Brown with Krishna the vineyard hound. |
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Pumping
over the juice and
then punching down
by hand allows us
to extract complex
flavors and soft tannins
from the grapes. When
the wine has achieved
the intensity, structure
and mouthfeel we feel
is ideal, we gently
press off the skins.
The wine then goes
into mostly new French
oak barrels where
it grows in complexity
and character over
nearly two years of
aging time. Minimal
sulfur additions and
temperature controlled
storage insure that
the wine is able to
achieve its fullest
expression when bottled. |
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By
keeping our production
small, we can give every
vine, fermentation bin
and barrel the attention
it deserves. We hope you
enjoy the results.
2006 VINTAGE UPDATE
The 2006 growing season might have been unusual, however, the harvest was made to order for the winemaker. A cold, rainy Spring delayed budbreak by a month. Warm weather during flowering resulted in a great fruit set. A heat spike in August accelerated ripening and we started picking on September 23rd. Then the weather cooled again and grapes were able to 'hang' on the vine and develop wonderful flavors at lower sugar levels. We were able to pick the five acre Rattlesnake Rock vineyard in nine separate blocks over the course of an entire month. Our last picking day was on October 24th.
Great flavors and physiological ripeness were not confined to our Estate vineyard. The Syrah grapes we obtained from Fairview Ranch in the Santa Lucia Highlands produced a wine in barrel that is offering wonderful aromatic complexity and structure. We will provide further updates as the wine continues to evolve in barrel and unveil the characteristics of each vineyard block.
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