Santa Rita
Hills
For us 2006 was a stellar
harvest. There was some variable ripeness because of a slow
flowering but that issue was easily solved by careful thinning.
Obviously every taster looks for something different, but for us
the grapes came in with bright acidity as they did in 2005, and yet
they expressed more personality, so we like the wines even
better.
This chardonnay always turns out great, and with only half the
fruit on the vines compared to 2005, it is one tightly strung and
intensely flavored wine. Delicious right now with fish or
shellfish, it has the potential to age into a real beauty if you
give it eight years or so. All of our Clos Pepe chardonnays are
still drinking well, even back to the first one made in 1999, but
this year's seems to be our most ageworthy chardonnay to date.
Winemaking wise we continue to barrel ferment and age the wines as
in the past; however we are using fewer new barrels in the
process--to better show off the distictive Clos Pepe personality.
This wine went through the secondary malo-lactic fermentation and
remained on its fermentation lees until bottling. It was bottled
without filtration.
