2014 BY Unrefined White
| Vintage: | 2014 |
| Varietal Composition: | |
| 60% | Sauvignon Blanc |
| 32% | Petit Manseng |
| 8% | Chardonnay |
| Harvest Date: | Sep 2 – Oct 2, 2014 |
| Sugar: | 25.6 avg brix |
| Acid: | 8.70 g/l |
| PH: | 3.23 |
| Aging: | stainless steel |
| Barrel Aging: | |
| 4 Months | |
| 100% | Stainless Steel |
| Ageability: | drink now |
| Fermentation: | Neutral Jupilles French Oak |
| Bottling Date: | Feb 21, 2015 |
| Residual Sugar: | 5.0 g/l - 0.5% |
| Alcohol %: | 14.5% |
So exotic, interesting and enjoyable. Even though this is the entry level wine from Boneyard or our partner winery Tarara, this is probably the one Jordan will reach for most often. It is equally suited to many occasions. The aromatics are intense and complex. At first you will get loads of canned pineapple notes but that will be followed with blood orange, Meyer lemon, basil and floral notes. That palate is fresh and enticing letting all the fruit express itself while leaving you desiring the next sip. Drink this wine now and enjoy its youth.
Most of this wine comes from the Front Royal vineyard in the Shenandoah AVA with only a touch of Chardonnay coming from our Road Block of Nevaeh Vineyard The Sauvignon Blanc comes from a west facing steep slope in the mountains just outside Front Royal. The stony and steep soils allow for some minerality to come into the fruit while the cooler mountainside creates Sauvignon Blanc with some fresh herbal notes and the afternoon sun ads some great pineapple components from abundant sunlight. The Petit Manseng on this site has the ability to hang extremely long getting ripe exotic character while still maintaining its telltale vibrant acidity and massive mouthfeel. The Chardonnay from the Road Block of Nevaeh tends to be some of the latest ripening Chardonnay in the State. It has a hallmark of showing great austerity and very linear fruit profiles with great apple, pear and citrus tones. It comes from block with denser clay giving it this more straight fruit profile and angular nature.
The 2014 vintage will always be remembered at Tarara as a year where you hurry up and wait and then run like crazy and repeat. The growing season was rather uneventful which was largely due to greater efforts than ever before in our vineyard. While some vineyards in the area found the season a bit too wet and struggles with downy mildew our vineyard was the cleanest it has ever been. That was incredibly important going into this hit and miss harvest season. It was an extremely late start to the growing season and generally slow all year long so we felt ripening was going to be a challenge on many varieties (especially the later Cabernets). We did not have most of the vineyard through bud break until May even this year. That combined with the chilly summer was what pushed that thought. The harvest time of September worked out well for us. We have a couple of well timed rains that essentially prolonged the growing season to allow the fruit longer on the vines. It was not enough to create an real damage or dilution, just slow the process. We would be picking several blocks right before each rain only to allow the rest to hang at least 7-10 days after any rain to recover and gain ripe flavors. In the end it was picking in spirts and well worth it. The wines have better concentration than we imagined and some of the riper flavors we have seen while maintaining an enjoyable balance with their structures.
We knew we would be working with an exotic wine this year and wanted to play with it as much as possible. The grapes were pressed into neutral Jupilles forest French oak to enjoy fermentation which lasted anywhere from 12-28 days (Petit Manseng took a long time to get dry with the high sugars). Post fermentation the wine was racked and assembled to simply stay in stainless steel for a few months and allow the characters to integrate. The wine was then only touched again to filter and bottle allowing the fullest expression of mainly two incredibly aromatic varieties express themselves with limited intervention.
Really this wine doesn’t call for anything. This is a great wine to open when you get home from work and it will brighten you day. Pairing it with food also will not be a problem though. It will work great with some of you summer salads and fresh herbs of the spring. It will also be great to enjoy with some treasures from the Chesapeake like our delicious oysters or a tasty crab cake.
225 Cases of 12 bottles