2018 Carbonic Pinot Noir

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100% Pinot Noir | Certified Organic

Chehalem Mountains AVA, Oregon

Produced + Bottled by Las Jaras Wines, Sebastopol, CA

Label Art by Blanco Miró

Description

This is an incredibly special wine. Yes, it’s delicious, and yes, it’s our first 100% pinot noir bottling, but what we love most about our 2018 Carbonic Pinot Noir is that it almost didn’t get made! 

For one thing, we never planned to make an Oregon wine. In 2018, we were on the hunt for a perfect pinot noir site in Northern California, specifically in the remote, mountainous, and coastal Mendocino Ridge AVA. We never found what we were looking for. So, we asked ourselves, why not look even farther north, to Oregon, where there is so much beautiful and vital winemaking happening, and many under-the-radar sites producing organic grapes? 

We found our perfect site in the Chehalem Mountains, an exciting AVA within the Willamette Valley. Our original plan was to make one wine from three separate fermentations: one carbonic, one partial whole-cluster, and one destemmed. But when Eric tasted the carbonic wine, he was stunned by its Burgundian expression. He loved it so much, we decided we had to bottle the carbonic wine on its own. (The remaining two fermentations, partial whole-cluster and destemmed, are bottled in our Winter 2020 Oregon Pinot Noir release.) 

This Pinot Noir opens up with a nose of raspberry and heady notes of clove, cola, and forest floor. The palate is plush and layered with cherry and savory earthy notes; the finish continues with raspberry and minerality. The wine is well balanced: its opulence is held in check by supple tannin and bright acidity. Like all the great pinot noirs, this wine is fabulously versatile with food. This winter, drink it alongside a bronzed roast chicken with hearty vegetables, or a rich, aromatic bowl of khao soi. Once grilling season starts back up again, you better believe we’ll be drinking this with hamburgers in the backyard.   

Vineyards

The grapes for this wine come from La Belle Promenade Vineyard, which is on a south-west facing slope on Chehalem Mountain. This is a new vineyard and it is organically farmed with high precision and high density. The vineyard is dryfarmed and sits at 820 feet above sea level. The soils are the volcanic Jory and Nekia series. This wine is made entirely from clone 115.

Winemaking

To prepare the grapes for their 600-plus-mile journey from Oregon to our winery in Sebastopol, California, we had to get our vented, quarter-ton macrobins up to the vineyard. Once the grapes were harvested, they began their journey back to Sonoma County on a semi-truck with a refer unit set to 40F. We were amazed by how clean the fruit was once it arrived. There was no rot, and not a single leaf or desiccated berry in the bins.  

The grapes for this wine were dumped directly to a dry iced T-Bin, where they sat for 10 days. After the carbonic maceration period, we pressed the grapes and completed fermentation naturally in a warm stainless steel tank. Near dryness, we transferred the wine to a neutral 600L demi-muid to finish fermentation in barrel. The wine continued to age on its lees until one month before bottling, when it was racked clean and returned to barrel. Near the bottling date, there was some positive pressure in the barrel denoting undesired biological activity (brettanomyces fermentation). Brettanomyces yeast love a racking because they get a little oxygen exposure, which lets them proliferate. We are very careful to only transfer under gas to well-gassed tanks and barrels, but they are opportunists! We sent a sample of the wine to a lab for confirmation and then decided to filter the wine, so that the wine stays sound and free of that horse sweat or bandaid character that Brett is known for. Thankfully, this wine is clean as a result of the filtration, and will continue to age gracefully. 

Technical Data

Download a technical data sheet here.

Important Shipping Info

There must be a person 21+ present at the time of delivery to sign for your wine; it cannot be left without an adult signature. Please review pertinent shipping information here before placing your order: More Shipping Information

There must be a person 21+ present at the time of delivery to sign for your wine; it cannot be left without an adult signature. Please review pertinent shipping information here before placing your order: More Shipping Information

Produced + Bottled by Las Jaras Wines in Sebastopol, CA