Las Jaras Sweet Berry Wine

Winemaker: Eric Wareheim and Joel Burt

Appellation: Mendocino County, California

Grape Varieties: Carignan, Zinfandel, Charbono, Cabernet Sauvignon, Valdiguie

We are so excited to share the 2018 Sweet Berry Wine with you! This was a long, cool vintage, which resulted in a nuanced, refined wine that will age wonderfully. It’s perfect for long, autumn evenings with friends—grab a warm blanket, start a fire, and watch as the flames illuminate the beautiful, deep ruby wine inside your glass. As the days grow shorter and colder, you’ll find even more occasions to pop open a bottle: holiday dinners, après-ski at the lodge, New Years Eve. This wine is loaded with spice and bright, berry fruit, making it wonderfully versatile with food. We hope it’s a wine you’ll keep coming back to for years to come – for your health!

Vineyards: The grapes for this blend are grown on old vines and sourced from vineyards in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. Most of the Carignan, Zinfandel and Charbono grapes come from Gary Venturi’s vineyard in Calpella, where they are dry farmed using sustainable farming techniques and grown in Yokayo sandy loam soils. Nine percent of the Carignan comes from the organic Riccetti vineyard in Redwood Valley. We also source some fruit from Green Valley in Solano County: Valdiguie from Quail Run vineyard and a bit of Carignan from Parenti Vineyard, both organically grown. The Cabernet grapes are sustainably farmed on Sonoma Mountain at Berger’s Oak Shade Ranch in Goulding on volcanic gravelly loam soils.

Winemaking: All of our fruit for this blend was hand-picked and each one of the varieties goes through its own separate, slightly different winemaking process in order to bring out the desired expression of the fruit. We further break the Carignan and Zinfandel into several different fermentation methods. Our Carignan, Zinfandel, and Cabernet were hand-sorted at the crusher. There was no sulfur added, no cold soaks and only native fermentation in open-top fermenters. Punch downs happened frequently in the beginning and decreased over time. Some of the Carignan lots were 20% and others were 50% whole cluster, while other lots were destemmed entirely. We typically drained and pressed just before dryness and aged in neutral French oak – a combination of 600L demi muids, 500L Puncheons and 228L Burgundy barrels. The Cabernet and Zinfandel were each 100% destemmed, drained and pressed at dryness. The Cabernet was aged in a combination of new and used French 225L Bordeaux barrels. The Zinfandel was aged in neutral French oak 600L demi muids. Carbonic Maceration was used for the Charbono. Whole clusters were placed in open-tanks with dry ice. The temperature was set at 65°F and 20 gallons of fermenting rosé was added to generate CO2. The tank was sealed and untouched for 10 days. On pressing day, we dug out the tank and added the whole clusters to a horizontal bladder press and gently crushed the grapes to avoid picking up too much structure from the skins. The juice was then fermented in a stainless steel tank and transferred at dryness to age in neutral French 228L Burgundy barrels. We racked and blended the wine into 4 blocks in February following harvest. We did this to allow the more structured lots mate with the leaner lots. This really allowed us to achieve more cohesion in the blend. One month before bottling we racked and blended all of the lots then returned the wine to barrels until one week before bottling when the wine was racked clean to tank. We bottled without fining or filtration.