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

This is our first go Sauvignon Blanc and we are very excited about what we have done. We had the
opportunity to get some amazing juice in 2009 and we jumped on it because we wanted to make a
new white wine. Our goal was to make a wine that is of great value, but still very high in quality.
We believe that we have found it at the organically farmed Springer Vineyard. The vines are over
20 years old so they are well established and producing complex and just plain tasty fruit. We could
not pass it up!

The wine has spent its whole life in stainless steel and we bottled it this summer- super simple,
strait forward winemaking from incredible source material. This Sauvignon Blanc seems like the
perfect cross between a New Zealand, a Californian and a Pouilly-Fumé. The wine is just a bit
grassy, along with wild tropical fruit flavors. It is rich and lush, but still very racy. This wine is great
for all seasons and an excellent pairing with oysters, cream sauced pasta and fish dishes. We made
just a tiny bit this year, just two barrels.

So everybody is making a rose’ these days. I being one to usually go against the grain, decided to be original, and jump on the pink bandwagon. Maybe it is the $ad feeling that winemakers get when bled off juice gets put down the drain during harvest, or maybe it is the fact that rose’ kicks a%*!

I collected my saignee from my ferments into old barrels and fermented them separately. I used some native yeast, some Grenache yeast, and also some aromatic white yeasts. I let them tick away in old barrels until bone dry, and then blended the barrels into stainless steel for a couple weeks to settle out the gross lees. The wine was then racked back to barrels where it was aged for four months in neutral oak. Malolactic fermentation was blocked to preserve the awesome acid profile. Prior to bottling in February, we filtered out the malo bugs and put it to bottle.

The resulting bottling is one of my proudest achievements. This rose’ is not to be missed if you a like crispy and refreshing rose’. It is the perfect wine for this summer. This wine pairs perfectly with fresh summer salads, bbq chicken or just plain sittin’ on the porch. It also goes great with all summer activities. Word on the streets is that it is a great golfing wine (it will shave at least 4 strokes off your game, or at least make you not care that you suck at golf!) Many pink wines are taken for what they mostly are: a simple quaffer that is not to be taken seriously. I however feel that I have got something special on my hands. This is a complex wine that can indeed be taken seriously if you want to (you can also drink directly from the bottle too- we’re not here to judge you!)

The wine is layered with aromas of strawberries, flowers and more strawberries. Seriously though, the wine iscrisp, refresh-ing and comes in about 13.3% alcohol. There is a ton of flavor packed in but your palate will not be overwhelmed at all.

This is the second vintage of this wine. I set out to make a different kind of chardonnay when I started this RRV project in 2005. I had nothing to lose at that point since there was not much wine to go around- if it sucked downthe drain it would go. I decided to leave the wines in barrel a bit longer than usual (16 months) to hopefully pick up some new layers of complexity. This wine has gone through full malolactic fermentation, but fear not; it
is not a heavy-handed wine. It is bright, exotic and refreshing on the palate.
The 2006 is similar to the 2005 in that it has aromas of peach, apricot, cream and a hint of roasted almond. In the mouth it is explosive.

It has a bright mouthfeel and is a fun wine to drink because of its unique styling. It is a far cry from your average chardonnay from CA. Most of my friends when blind tasted, have not guessed it as Chardonnay. If you are into something a bit outside the Chardonnay realm, this wine is definitely worth a shot.

This wine pairs great with grilled seafood, chicken, salads, and creamy cheeses.