Zepaltas Wines

The advantage of having a slightly warmer, less risky site was key to making great wine in 2010. The summer that never happened caused much stress throughout Sonoma County, but it was smooth sailing at this vineyard. The W.E. Bottoms Vineyard is located in a little warm pocket up top of Harrison Grade that doesn’t experience as much of a high/low temperature differential as some of our other sites. It worked out quite well in 2010 at the vineyard.
On September 29, 2010(about 2 weeks later than usual) at the crack of dawn, we harvested all 4 clones from the vineyard. The clones were then hand sorted at the winery and co-fermented together using about 20% whole cluster. After 16 days on the skins, the wine was then pressed at directly to barrel, and left go through malolactic fermentation naturally.

On the nose there are hints of forest floor, cedar, cola and dried cherries, and on the palate we get blueberry, raspberry and a slight meatiness, all set up in a slightly softer framework that the more tannic 2009. There are definitely some chalky tannins present in the wine, but they are much more refined in the 2010. This wine was aged for 11 months in barrel (60% new) and the final blends were selected prior to bottling (unfined and unfiltered.) My guess is that this wine will be ready to drink before the 2009, but still should improve with about 2-4 years aging.

124 cases made
unfined & unfiltered