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Wine Details
Price:
$28.00 per bottle
Description:
Our 2003 Domaine Carneros Pinot Noir is complex and elegant with rich fruit tones of black cherry, cassis and violets overlaid with notes of chocolate, smoke and East Indian spices. Round forward fruit on the nose is followed by an extraordinarily balanced palate adding richness, body and a long velvety finish to this wine.
To maintain the character and intensity of our 2003 Pinot Noir fruit, the fermentation occurs in small open-topped vats. The fruit is gently destemmed with whole berries. The grapes are then cold soaked for four days prior to the beginning of fermentation. The fermentation lasts for 8-12 days. A “punch-down” or mixing of grape skins and fermenting juice are done every six hours to enhance color and flavor development. After pressing, the finished wine goes directly into French barrels where it is gently racked once during the 10 months in the barrel.
The grapes for the 2003 Domaine Carneros Pinot Noir consist of eight clonal selections of Estate-grown, 100% Carneros Appellation, pinot noir from three different Domaine Carneros vineyards. Harvest is done in the morning while the grapes are cool. All the harvesting is done by hand into shallow bins to minimize damage to the fruit.
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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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