2021 Trousseau Gris

This is the fourth vintage of our Trousseau Gris from Fanucchi Wood Road Vineyard in Russian River Valley. The 2021 vintage was quite bountiful at this vineyard; we ended up with four times as much as the previous vintage. We learn so much from making this wine. The wine we have made from this fruit just keeps on getting better and better. We know to grab the fruit a as soon as the berries start to soften. Picking grapes early doesn’t always make a better wine, but in this case, the freshness and nerve that we seek is lost once the grapes get to about 20 brix. Are target is about 18 brix. We pick this grape before the pH goes up and it gives us a wine with firm acidity, minerality, and a purity of fruit. This wine is really fun to watch open up in the glass. At first is stony and mineral with lots of white nectarine on the palate. As it opens up and the temperature comes up, the stony aromatics begin to show a bit of white cherry, jasmine and honeycomb. The palate firms up with apricot and bitter orange with an intense minerality that builds through the finish. It will be interesting to watch this wine age!

This is a perfect wine for lighter fare and also spicy cuisine. Halibut ceviche or a smoked trout salad with a tangy vinaigrette would be ideal partners. The mild and savory tones of sushi would also mate perfectly.

The grapes for this wine come from Fanucchi Wood Road Vineyard, which is also famous for its Zinfandel. These old vines were planted in 1981 to a quadrilateral trellis system, high off the ground to reduce the risk of frost. The soils are sandy loam and the vineyard is sustainably farmed. Peter Fanucchi says he farms “organic in theory” whatever that means. We will just call it conventional with weeds. This is the only non-organic vineyard that we work with. This is pretty much the only Trousseau Gris vineyard in the United States; there are other places to find the variety, but they are very small plantings. I was talking to Greg Lafollette who started Flowers Winery and he said that he used to add it to their Sonoma Coast Chardonnay to tame the acid profile a bit.

Whenever we make a wine, one of the main things we consider is how can we make it super sexy. Sexy to us means full of intrigue, bone dry, lightly textured and mineral. Most Trousseau Gris is made with skin contact, and we knew that for the type of wine we wanted to make, it had to be direct to press. Trousseau Gris is a low acid and high pH variety; skin contact would further raise the pH and make the wine blocky, salty and not sexy. We settled the juice for 24 hours before we racked to another tank for fermentation. Once fermentation started natively, we transferred the juice to two 1200L Vin et Terre Zen Amphora (non- oxidative) and a neutral 600L demi muid for fermentation which lasted about two weeks. The wine was aged for 10 months on its lees. We racked about a month before bottling and then returned the wine to its original vessels. Just before the bottling date, we racked the wine to a tank for bottling. It was bottled without fining or filtration. The wine may throw a haze or may have a deposit, but this is nothing to be worried about; instead rejoice!

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