2013 Killer Cluster Roussanne
| Vintage: | 2013 |
| Varietal Composition: | |
| 90% | Roussanne |
| 10% | Marsanne |
| Harvest Date: | October 30, 2013 |
| Sugar: | 24.2 avg brix |
| PH: | 3.84 |
| Barrel Aging: | |
| 10 Months | |
| 100% | Neutral Jupilles Forest French Oak |
| Fermentation: | Barrel Fermentation |
| Residual Sugar: | 0 |
| Alcohol %: | 13.9 |
Classically Roussanne and classically Walla Walla. This wine shows great concentration and depth with friendly and vibrant characters. The nose is very expressive with cantaloupe, wild flowers, and Asian pear notes. The palate is both full and fresh with lively fruit and mouth coating textures. Such a fun wine. I want to say the wine has a few years in it but with the lack of history with these vineyards we recommend enjoying young. It’s awesome now anyway!
Both the Roussanne and small amount of Marsanne came from a vineyard in the Walla Walla Valley in Washington State. Being a Rhone fanatic our winemaker Jordan was very excited about the opportunity to work with these incredible grape as neither variety is as well suited to our sites. We worked hard to source the fruit from on the top vineyards we could find on the West Coast and believed that Walla Walla was simply the best place for these great Rhone varieties. The soils for Walla Walla are largely wind swept loam soils. Climatically the vineyards tend to have some of the highest diurnal temperature swings in Washington allowing very hot days to ripen flavors and sugars while the cool to cold nights preserves freshness and acidity. The wine tend to have incredible concentration of fruit showing great varietal character while maintaining a youthful freshness not always associated with its top varieties.
The winemaking for the Roussanne was much like how we treat our Single Vineyard Tarara wines with minimal handling and slow elevage. The biggest difference is that this wine utilized more neutral oak and that we used all commercial yeast in the fermentation. After the trek across the country we just felt it best to have controlled fermentations. The wine spent ten months on the lees with bi weekly stirring the first 4 months. In July, 2014 the wine was assembled to be filtered and bottled in August 2014.
If you happen to be out west this would be great paired up with some of their famous Dungeness Crab, but since the grapes were brought here I say try this with the fabulous Blue Crabs out of the Chesapeake. Crab cakes with a saffron aioli served alongside a grill of summer squash.