2017 County Pinot Noir

The long, sunny, warm fall of 2017 is expressed by sweet, red berry aroma and enhanced by elegantly balanced extended oak influence. The palate is ripe and loaded with flavours of red cherry, strawberry and classic beetroot with a long, lingering finish. Fresh and lively now, this wine will taste it’s best with 5-6 years in the cellar towards 2025 and onward.

Our yields for 2017 were very low due to heavy rains during flowering. The low yields combined with idyllic end-of-summer weather resulted in grapes with beautifully ripe skins and rich phenolic ripeness. As always, we followed our longstanding practice of minimal intervention wine making. All our clones were co-fermented with natural/indigenous yeasts spending between 25 and 35 days on the skins. They were gently pressed in our basket press extracting all the potential of the vintage. The wines were aged for 18 months in 228L French oak casks (1/3 new, 1/3 2nd fill, 1/3 neutral older casks). The wines were then racked to tank incorporating only the best fine lees for an additional two months aging. The wine was racked a second time and bottled unfiltered and unfined. This wine has good concentration of fruit and great depth even with its relatively young age at a remarkably low 11.5% alcohol.