This wine, our first Pinot Grigio, is another example of our "hands-on" winemaking. Pinot Grigio literally means the "gray" Pinot, which it is. It's skin pigment falls somewhere between it's two cousins, Pinot Bianco (the "white" Pinot) and Pinot Noir, or Nero, (the "black" Pinot). The fruit has a not quite fully blue/black hue to it thats gives it a gray, or even pink caste.
To make this wine we employed gentle yet intensive techniques. Hand harvesting was followed by whole cluster pressing-to fully capture the essence of the fruit. The juice was slowly barrel fermented for over 2 months. During a "sur-lie" aging period of 5 months in 25% new oak barrels the lees, or yeast sediment, were stirred once a week to encourage greater complexity. We avoided the malo-lactic fermentation to retain the natural acidity of the wine in order to give it greater expression of fruit and aromatics. Before bottling we lightly filtered the wine to help clarify it. The bottling yielded less that 100 cases of this wine.
In it's youth it is showing lively aromas and flavors of green apple and melon. It has retained a vibrant acidity on the palate which makes it a wonedrful wine to accompany food. A great wine to hav as an aperitif with hors d'ouvres in warmer weather, it also shows well with a variety of starter courses.
With this white wine we have returned to our bird logo label package, as seen here.