2017 SINGLE VINEYARD LIMITED MERLOT
2017 Single Vineyard Limited Merlot
100% Merlot
Aroma / Flavor: blackberry / raspberry candy / cocoa / graham cracker / toasted marshmallow / savory spice / mushroom / graphite
Texture: soft / velvet / full / long / bright
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$67.50 | Club $60.00 | Red Mountain Club $56.25
Soft red fruits, raspberry, cocoa, cinnamon sugar toast, touch of menthol, red licorice, dusty earth, and vanilla. Full, soft, red plum, cocoa, cinnamon, savory shortbread, and dried herbs. Nice and soft with balanced long finish.
Cellaring: 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.
Grapes are from Jolet Vineyard. This wine was cold soaked overnight then inoculated with yeast, fermented for 7 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 100% New American oak.
Harvest: 2017 started off cold! January stayed in the upper teens for most of the month and dipped into the negatives for a day or two. Along with the cold we had a lot of snow! People were calling it the 60-year freeze, we hadn’t seen a winter like that since 1955. Spring was damp and the hills had never been so green. Things started to heat up around July and August and by August we were surrounded by fires originating in Canada and all up and down the West Coast. There was a blanket of smoke in the sky, which really dampened the suns UV rays. We think this actually helped the vines slow down ripening due to less photosynthesis taking place. Luckily the fires were far enough away that smoke taint was not an issue at all. We had a mild September and October which really stretched out the maturation period allowing flavors to develop nicely without Brix getting too high. 2017 was a really interesting year and an exciting one! The resulting wines have been full of color and flavor, especially here on Red Mountain
