Open House
Saturday January 26, 2008
From 10:00-5:00
2006 SRH Wines
This is an opportunity to try all three 2006 SRH wines — Pinot Noir, Syrah and Chardonnay — together. All these wines come from vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills district (thus SRH) and the majority from our own Lafond Vineyard. The wines are still young and will continue to develop with aging but with six months in the bottle we think they are already fabulous.
Manager Mirella Valdez, as always, will provide cheese, bread and some desserts to accompany the wines. With the recent rains the hills are green, the air is crisp and it should be a great day.
Tell a Friend:
Rising in the middle of the western Santa Ynez Valley, the SantaRita Hills are the distinguishing feature of our AVA, home of Lafond Vineyard and a wonderful area to grow Pinot Noir. The long, very cool growing season of this area is exemplified by February budbreak and September harvest, a long period for vine physiology.
We feel this long growing season is what imparts the complexity of flavor and fruit intensity to our Pinot Noir A tremendous amount of effort has gone into fine tuning the vineyard to coax this fickle grape into producing the exotic, elusive flavors only pampered Pinot Noir will reveal.
Winemaker Bruce McGuire chooses very specific sites in the vineyard for each of his Pinot Noir selections. Several different Pinot Noir clones, some planted as early as 1983, add to the palette of flavor and texture from which to craft each Pinot Noir. In 2006, Bruce chose 6 clones from 16 vineyard lots (Lafond Vineyard and the nearby Arita Hills Vineyard) picked at ripness over a four week period.
Vintage 2006 saw crop yields a little lighter than 2005, with very good fruit concentration. The Pinot Noir harvest was also exactly a month later than in 2005. The wine was aged in French oak from Burgundy (25% new oak) and bottled in August 2007. The complexity of flavor found in Pinot Noir from Lafond Vineyard is a wonderful match with savory foods and a classic with grilled salmon or mushrooms.
Suggested Retail 26.00
To Order:
To Tell a Friend:
Located in the western Santa Ynez Valley, the Santa Rita Hills AVA is an ideal environment for growing intensely flavored full-bodied Chardonnay.
The AVA is distinguished by the very cool and long growing season created by a convergence of unusual geography in this part of California. Our southerly latitude means that frost danger is usually behind us in February of most years.
This leads to early bud break, which can start the growing season as much as a month earlier than growing regions to our North. During the summer, heat rising from the Mojave Desert 90 miles inland and the eastern boundary of our unique east-west system of mountains and valleys draws in cold air from the Pacific Ocean 15 miles to our West.
This guarantees cool days and chilly nights during the long growing season of the nine-mile length of the Santa Rita Hills AVA.
A blend of four neighboring vineyards, the 2006 Chardonnay SRH is winemaker Bruce McGuire’s selection to showcase the ripe, concentrated Chardonnay for which the Santa Rita Hills is known. Bruce had each vineyard block picked as the fruit ripened about three weeks later than average to the late date of Nov. 5th.
This wine is a good choice to pair with many cows’ milk cheeses such as Brie or Camembert and, as a nice surprise; the fantastic washed-rind triple-creme Cow Girl Creamery Red Hawk. Richer foods such as roast chicken or whole, farm raised striped bass are also ideal pairings.
This bottling will reward aging through 2012 and promises to be quite showy through 2116.
Suggested retail price 22.00
To order:
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