2017 Merlot

2017 was a more restrained vintage, with balanced temperatures leading up to harvest allowing us to harvest the fruit at slightly lower sugar levels retaining those beautiful fresh fruit characteristics in the wine.

I tend to be a creature of habit once I’ve figured out winemaking for each of our vineyards. The Merlot vineyard has pretty much followed the same track vintage to vintage. Picking the fruit as early in the morning as we can to keep it cool and immediately desteming it into small macro bins. We keep it cold for a couple days before adding yeast (cold soaking) to lock in as much color and character before the presence of alcohol.

Following up on our first bottling of this wine in our 2019 JOY release we continued to barrel age it for a total of 30 months. The resulting wine is lusciously beautiful. Soft and spicy on the nose with raspberry and cherry fruit, turning to mocha and darkening to plum, blueberry and caramel on the palate.

Our most recent release of 2017 Merlot from the Smith Vineyard. Aged over 30 months in barrel.