Las Jaras Glou Glou 2021

Winemaker: Eric Wareheim and Joel Burt

Appellation: Mendocino County, California

Grape Varieties: 50% Zinfandel, 19% Carignan, 15% Petite Sirah, 6% Mourvèdre, 6% Chardonnay, 4% Cabernet Sauvignon

As you may be able to tell by this long list of vineyards and varieties, this was a very complicated harvest. We had the opportunity to try a lot of new fruit sources because fruit supply was so scarce. This was a result of the effects of the frost of the 2020 vintage cycle, the ongoing drought, and meager irrigation water supplies being diverted to cannabis crops. The frost during the 2020 vintage cycle really hammered Mendocino County old vine Carignan. This frost killed the fruiting buds and did not leave many spur positions on the vines for the following vintage; so the yields were extremely low. Other varieties had small clusters and tiny berries because the vines were starved of water. In order to make our targeted volume of wine, we had to scour the county (and beyond) for new vineyard sources. We found some great new sites that we will continue to source from in the future.

To make this light style red wine we used many different vinification methods including carbonic maceration, traditional skin maceration, and what we call reverse saignée. The goal is always to make a layered cohesive blend. Most of the lots were fermented with carbonic maceration, a gentle process that helps to keep early-harvest wines from becoming too tannic. After 7-15 days, depending on the lot, we pressed the juice off its skins where they fermented natively in tank after 10ppm sulfur was added. Reverse saignée is when we whole cluster press tannic red grape varieties and then add that juice to a red wine fermenter. This is a way to increase the juice to skin ratio to make a lighter red wine. Then, to keep the wine bright and fresh, half of the lots were aged in barrels and half were aged in stainless steel tank. This wine received a small amount of sulfur and it was filtered prior to bottling.

Pizza, burgers, wine: the Las Jaras holy trinity. (If more people subscribed to our religion, would there be world peace?) This is the fifth installment of the Glou Glou series, which was created to be the perfect wine for circle foods (pizza and burgers). The 2021 edition of this light red is quite a bit more serious than last year’s. The vintage gave us very intense fruit, but our winemaking strategy was to use methods to minimize extraction to create a fresh and delicious wine. This Glou Glou is certainly a food wine, in fact, it begs for food. It has enough acid to stand up to your favorite tomato sauce, as well as intense berry notes that perfectly complement the char of a burger or perfectly cooked pizza crust. Serve this slightly chilled, and you will be the hero of your next backyard barbecue—this is the most refreshing red wine ever, and the perfect antidote to long summer days and the heat of the grill. On the nose it is a sea of hibiscus and raspberry with undertones of roasted coffee and wet rock. On the palate is intense and fleshy with flavors of black plum and pomegranate and a long textural finish.