2016 SINGLE VINEYARD LIMITED MERLOT
Tasting notes
Rich, red fruits, plum, light milk chocolate, black pepper, cloves, vanilla and a touch of creamy raspberry crumble. Balanced, lush and long finish with flavors of red fruits, cocoa, sweet spices and touch of vanilla.
Grapes are from Bel’ Villa vineyard. This wine was cold soaked overnight then inoculated with yeast, fermented for 6 days on skins while being pumped over twice daily before pressing to barrels, where it was inoculated with malo-lactic bacteria. It was 100% barrel aged for 22 months in 67% new American oak and 33% neutral oak.
Harvest: 2016 had a very mild and warm winter followed by a wet Spring with a few heat spikes early on in May. Summer had an average amount of heat, but nothing like what we saw in 2015. A few rain events throughout the growing season made regulating irrigation water a bit tricky. The first part of harvest had mild heat which made for steady and even ripening of the fruit. The end of harvest was hit with off and on rain for a few weeks, which really slowed things down and stretched out picking dates. The 2016 harvest resulted in large crops with impressive fruit quality.
| Vintage | 2016 |
| Varietal | Merlot |
| Varietal Composition | 100% Merlot |
| Appellation | Red Mountain AVA |
| Vineyard | 100% Bel’ Villa Vineyard |
| Acid | 5.4 g/L |
| PH | 3.94 |
| Aging | As with all Red Mountain red wines, it should age well, probably peaking in 15 years, but still a great wine even at 20-30 years old. |
| Alcohol | 14.00% |
| Volume | 750 ml |
| Cases Produced | 74 12-pack cases |
