Let The Winemaking Begin . . .
Now that harvest is essentially over, we get to move on to the fun part . . . the wine making. With all of our fruit off the vine and in the cellar, we can now turn our focus to making the best wine possible out of the 2010 vintage. It has been an exciting year and a challenging year and as usual we have a wide range of wines we are working on, including the old favorites and some new varietals and styles.
One new style we are excited about is our 2010 Late Harvest Muscat Canelli, which was made by drying the berries out in the sun on trays to bring up the sugars. They came in at 30 brix and are now midway through the fermentation process. According to Tom the Late Harvest “tastes very good so far.” It is always exciting to make wines in new styles and experiment with the wine making process because you never know exactly what you are going to get and when it turns out well you have learned something new.
Other standout wines from 2010 include our Petite Sirah, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Whale Rock Chardonnay, Whale Rock Pinot Noir and our Cabernet Sauvignon. Tom is particularly pleased with the Petite Sirah this year, saying “it has great aromatics and really good color.” Our Petite Sirah has become more and more popular in the past couple years and this vintage should definitely keep that trend going. This will also be the first year we have produced Whale Rock Chardonnay and Tom says it will most likely be used for our Reserve Chardonnay, and that means it must be very tasty!! Our Whale Rock Pinot Noir is also a “standout” varietal for the 2010 vintage and should turn out to be a very nice wine. Compared to past years our 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon has a bit lower alcohol percentage but overall the flavors are very pronounced and Tom is sure it will be a great year for Castoro Cab.
As we have said farewell to the fall season and embraced winter we have watched the change of the seasons in our vineyards. In the past week we have had extremely low overnight temperatures, dropping into the 20s and the result has been evident in our vineyards. The leaves have changed from vibrant yellows and reds, to brown and crispy and in some places they have already fallen off the vine.
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and don’t forget to start thinking about what wines will be appropriate for the upcoming holidays!!
Cheers,
Luke
