Last Thursday early in the cool morning this year’s harvest began. First to be picked were Chardonnay grapes from our vineyard. Jim Milone our winemaker determined that a brix between 17 and 19, was absolutely perfect for this year’s sparkling wine. We hand harvested the grapes and rushed them to our neighboring processing facility for whole cluster pressing to extract the cleanest free run juice. It will ferment for two weeks, clarify and all cold settle before primary bottling. This will insure citrusy and floral characteristics in the cuvee. It will remain in tirage for about two years before the final phase begins. As we work with the 09 Sparkling wine, we are also disgorging the eagerly awaited ’06 our first but surely not our last sparkling wine. As we conducted our in-house final tastings, we concluded that our preference is for a very dry and yeasty sparkling wine. We are really looking forward to its release during the Hopland Passport Weekend in late October.
Terra Sávia’s Classic Tuscan wins Bronze at this year’s Los Angeles International Olive Oil Competition. This year they received 477 oils from 318 worldwide producers from Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay and the United States.
While most of us think that olive oil comes from countries like Italy, Spain and the Middle East, the extensive list of participating countries shows that olives can be grown in many parts of the Earth. From this noble fruit , fine oils of outstanding taste, character and complexity can be produced. So forget cheap supermarket oils with no taste. Go explore the wonderful world of extra virgin olive oils that are out there. We certainly will.
Double Gold
98 out of 100 points at the California State Competition
Best of Class and Best of California
Usually used as a blending wine in Bordeaux, Petit Verdot is little known as a varietal in the wine world. Although we too use this variety to blend, we wanted to experience the quality of the wine as it stands alone. The extended maceration softens tannins in the finish and adds layers of fruit to the mid palate. Aging in small French oak casks with different toast levels further adds to the complexity of this wine.
