Why our wines are different from the rest

When guests come for a tasting which currently takes place in our home, they are often pleasantly surprised at the flights of wine we offer. “Wow we get to try a 2004 Pinot Noir, that’s great! We’ve only been able to taste 2007 wines.”

I receive many questions from consumers, distributors and restaurants owners who taste our wines, and by far the most common question is: why are you just releasing a 2005?

The answer this question comes in a few parts. When John Bacigalupi and Tyler Heck first discussed the venture of making wine in 2001 they knew they had to offer something different. With already well known winemaking neighbors such as William Selyem and Rochioli we wanted to offer a wine program that was unique to our consumers.

John and Tyler decided to do both extended barrel and bottle aging with the wines they produced. Our first release of Pinot Noir was the 2002 vintage which we released in March of 2004.

Tyler’s winemaking program from vineyard to bottle is a slow and meticulous process. Part of his program includes an extended cold soak of the must in the tank. This process is done for approximately 10-14 days before fermentation when the grapes have just been pumped into the tanks.  Cold soaking is used to extract tannins at a slower rate, the tank temperature is reduced by using dry ice.

Cool temperatures in the tank are required to prevent any spontaneous fermentation.  One of my main jobs during harvest is the pick up and delivery of dry ice to the winery, we use hundreds of pounds throughout the season. The main advantage to cold soaking is the extraction of long chain tannins which come from the skins, not the seeds, giving the resulting wine a smoothness on the palate.  Tannins extracted by alcohol tend to be shorter, causing wines to be harsh on the finish. After the cold soak the tank is allowed to slowly warm up to a temperature which will allow fermentation. In general most wineries cold soak for 7 days or less. Many don’t have the tank space to run the process longer than that and dry ice is very costly. At John Tyler we cold soak our Pinot’s for 10-14 days, that is twice as long as a standard winery. This creates intense color and flavors in our wines. This process is very labor intensive and requires a round the clock monitoring of the grapes in the tank.

Another very important reason we age our wines so significantly is because we sterile filter them.  Sterile filtering is a process that removes any microbes from the wine and ensures the wine is stable when they are bottled and will age without spoiling from bacteria. We want our customers to be able to age our wines for 10-20 years and be happy when they open the bottle. While there is an upside to sterile filtering there is also a slight down side. Wines that are sterile filtered typically need more time in the bottle to recover, this is another reason we wait to release our wines. While some winemakers feel that sterile filtering might have some “stripping” effect on the wine, we typically don’t experience this because of the extended cold soak.

When we developed the extended aging program for our wines we also wanted our customers to be able to age our wines when they took them home to their cellar. For the most part, other California wineries do not make their wines to age. Their focus is on getting the wine from the barrel to the bottle and out the door as soon as possible.  Overhead cost for aging wines is very expensive, and many wineries have to pay for storage at warehouses. We house all our barrels and the majority of our cased goods on site in an old milking parlor that has been converted to our wine cellar. This results in little to no overhead costs and the ability to age our wines until we think they are ready to be presented to the public.

In developing this extended barrel and bottle aging program we created one-of-a-kind Pinot Noir and Zinfandel vertical collections. Guests can purchase vintages 2002-2005 Russian River Pinot Noir and 2003-2005 of the Zinfandel. We will be adding Petite Sirah to our vertical offerings this spring.  These vertical sets of Pinot and Zinfandel are so unique you cannot find them anywhere but in our tasting room.

Contact us to arrange an appointment today.