2021 Sweet Berry Wine

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Our Sweet Berry Wine is the perfect companion for extended autumn evenings among friends. Grab a warm blanket, start a fire, and watch as the flames illuminate the beautiful, deep ruby wine inside your glass. As the days grow short and temperatures drop, even more occasions will arise to uncork a bottle of Sweet Berry Wine: be it holiday feasts, lodge-side après-ski gatherings, or welcoming the New Year. Laden with spices and vibrant berry notes, this wine pairs impeccably with an array of dishes, showcasing its remarkable versatility. Undoubtedly, it's a wine that will beckon us back time and again throughout the years to come.

After skipping the 2020 vintage of Sweet Berry Wine due to wildfire, we are happy to finally release this iteration of our flagship red blend. It exudes incredible finesse; however, this hasn't always been the case. This vintage required ample time to stretch its legs and evolve into the elegant and harmonious beauty that now graces the glass before you. The vintage was characterized by drought conditions, yielding a small crop of petite berries, reduced by 20% to 30%. Rainfall barely reached half of the average, subjecting the vines to a struggle in bearing fruit. Fortunately, the weather remained relatively mild after that. It took us a little longer to release the 2021 because it necessitated extended periods in both barrel and bottle to find its rhythm. The result is a wine that wields power yet exhibits refinement. 

See what Dr. Brule has to say about the taste of his wine. [VIDEO] 

Label Art by Duke Aber

57% Zinfandel | 25% Petite Sirah | 18% Carignan

The grapes for this blend are grown on dry farmed old vines and sourced primarily from vineyards in the center of Mendocino County near Calpella. All of the vineyards we source from are practicing organic. Most of the Zinfandel, Carignan and all of the Petite Sirah came from Gary Venturi’s vineyard in Calpella, where they are farmed in Yokayo sandy loam soils. We also got a bit of the Carignan from Testa and Larry Venturi Vineyards on the east side of the highway. 12% of the Zinfandel came from Enz vineyard in Lime Kiln Valley.

Within this vintage of Sweet Berry Wine, you'll be greeted by robust aromas of cocoa powder, black plum, marionberry, forest floor, and allspice. With each sip, you'll encounter notes of blue fruit, deep cherry, and red licorice, supported by supple tannins that lead to an enduring and savory finish.

<p>All of the fruit in this blend was hand-picked and each block was selected and fermented separately. We like to employ a slightly different winemaking process for each fermentor in order to bring out more complexity in the blend. There were no additions to the fruit when received and added to tanks. We do not perform cold soaks and all lots were native yeast fermented in open-top fermenters. We employ minimal extraction in the cellar with only one very light punchdown per day. We typically drained and pressed at dryness and aged in neutral 228L Burgundy barrels, used and new French 600L demi muids and 500L puncheons. We kept the Press wine separate and it was not added back to the blend. We racked with light lees and blended the wine into 3 blocks in the spring following harvest. We did this to allow the more structured lots marry with the leaner lots. This allowed us to achieve great cohesion in the blend. One month before bottling we racked and blended all of the lots followed by a couple more weeks in the barrel. One week before bottling, the wine was racked clean to a new tank. We bottled without fining or filtration. Total barrel time was 14 months.</p>

Production: 1737 cases | ABV: 14.07% | TA: 7.53 g/L | pH: 3.51 | VA: 0.68 g/L | DCO2: 706ppm
Total SO2: 54ppm | RS: 0.98 g/L | Turbidity at bottling: 10 NTU

Download a technical data sheet here.

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Produced + Bottled by Las Jaras Wines in Sebastopol, CA