Liquid Gold 🍯

Here is a wine that few of my colleagues would have every attempted to make. They would have quit at the start. Reason? These were some of the ugliest, damaged, nearly unusable grapes that I have ever seen in my years of making wine. This was a whole new level of grape resuscitation. These grapes were heavily damaged from early season powdery mildew (PM) and over the course of the entire growing season things got progressively worse. There was also some late development of botrytis as well, which is a fantastic thing for Semillon, and certainly aided in the complexity of the resulting wine. Of course, there is not much you can do once a vine is so heavily damaged with PM, unless of course you see the potential beauty in the challenge and a responsibility of preserving history. This fruit is historic and so everything had to be done to make “something”…or at the least, just to try. I am not one to give up so easily. I had just encountered this same PM issue during the 2016 and 2017 vintages so, I knew what technique that I needed to deploy. But, would it work? This damage if far worse that either 2016 or 2017. The technique is called “lees washing” and it works wonders to damaged fruit without having to result in using any of the “chemical” solutions often used as a last resort. I washed this wine twice with clean lees from a Muller-Thurgau and Pinot Gris fermentation, each time dumping the Semillon lees out.

The 2018 Semillon survived because of talent and a will to make a wine from even the worst looking fruit. This wine was aged for 9 months in a combination of neutral French oak barrels, it was bottled unfined (Vegan) and unfiltered. It rested another 18 months in bottle, gaining more weight and developing a concentration that few wines can achieve naturally. Semillon is an incredibly durable grape. This wine is one of the most exotic wines that I have ever made. It bows to the misunderstood world of “noble rot”….it is not sweet, but it is dense and haunting. Rarely am I ever impressed with any of my wines, but this one, given the fruit that I was provided? This one, I am most proud of.

I used a copper color background on this label to distinguish it from previous vintages of this wine. This Semillon is similar to the 2016 vintage, but with further concentration and exotic notes. Think of it like a Chenin Sec from Anjou, Loire Valley, France, or a partially botrytized Tokaj from Hungary.

WINE INFO

APPELLATION: Willamette Valley
WINE TYPE:             White
VINTAGE:                 2018
GRAPE:                     100% Sémillon
ESTATE GROWN: No, purchased grapes
VINEYARD:              David Hill Vineyard
VINEYARD AGE:    52 years old
DRY FARMED:      Yes
OWN ROOTED:      Yes
SOIL TYPE:              Laurelwood (Loess)
ELEVATION:            490 feet (149m)
HARVEST DATE:    October 2nd, 2018
HARVEST METHOD:    Hand Harvested
BRIX AT HARVEST:      28.80                
SKIN CONTACT:      None
CHAPTALIZATION:    None
FERMENTATION:        Ambient Yeast
MATURATION VESSEL:     225L DAMY, Billon, Mercury, Rousseau
ALCOHOL (by volume):    14.24%
SULFUR DIOXIDE (SO₂):    <2mg/L
ACIDITY SCALE (pH):        3.57
TOTAL ACIDITY:                   6.8 g/L
FINING AGENT:                   Unfined (Vegan)
FILTRATION:                         Unfiltered
BOTTLE SIZE:                       750ml
CLOSURE TYPE:                  FineCorkX (99.99% TCA free)
HAND BOTTLED:                 Yes
PRODUCTION:                     48 cases
BOTTLING DATE:                June 22nd, 2019
RELEASE DATE:                  December 11th, 2020

This wine was bottled in  🇺🇸 made glass, with a cork from  🇮🇹 and a label that was designed and printed in the  🇺🇸 .
Please  ♻︎ this bottle when you are finished enjoying it.