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Wine Details
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Description:
The grapes are picked ideally at about 25 degrees brix to ensure mature ripe fruit flavors. They are hand selected at harvest time by Lee Martinelli, who tastes the grapes and chooses when to pick according to the developed concentration of flavors in the berries. After picking, the whole berries undergo a long cool fermentation, with indigenous yeast, to generate skin contact and expose fruit character. The juice is gravity fed into small oak barrels with a touch of residual sugar remaining to complete the fermentation process in barrel until dry. It is then allowed to rest and mature in 75% new French oak on its gross lees for 10 months. Being a particular and moody varietal to tamper with this Pinot Noir is minimally handled. This wine is neither heat nor cold stabilized and is unfined and unfiltered.
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Varietal Definition
Pinot Noir:
The name is derived from the French words for ‘pine’ and ‘black’ alluding to the varietals' tightly clustered dark purple pine cone shaped bunches of fruit. Pinot Noir grapes are grown around the world, mostly in the cooler regions, but the grape is chiefly associated with the Burgundy region of France. It is widely considered to produce some of the finest wines in the world, but is a difficult variety to cultivate and transform into wine. By volume most Pinot Noir in America is grown in California with Oregon coming in second. Other regions are Washington State and New York.During 2004 and the beginning of 2005, Pinot Noir became considerably more popular amongst consumers in the United States, possibly because of the movie Sideways. Being lighter in style, it has benefited from a trend toward more restrained, less alcoholic wines. It is the delicate, subtle, complex and elegant nature of this wine that encourages growers and winemakers to cultivate this difficult grape. Robert Parker has described Pinot Noir: "When it's great, Pinot Noir produces the most complex, hedonistic, and remarkably thrilling red wine in the world."
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