Tag Archives: Gamay

60 Days of Rosé #14 | Domaine de la Prebende | Beaujolais Rosé | $13.99

 

60 Days of Rosé #14 | Domaine de la Prebende | Beaujolais Rosé | $13.99

  Wash your palate in the delights of Beaujolais!  Harmonic, delectable, and not sweet, we are utterly charmed by this rosy tonic crafted by the Dupeuble family.

Fertilized with natural compost from only 7.4 acres of land in Beaujolais and fermented naturally, this fresh n’ snappy rosé is a rare delicacy – santé!

 

From kermitlynch.com

Domaine de la Prebende Beaujolais Rosé:

  • Varietal:  Gamay
  • Vine Age:  3-70 years
  • Soil Type:  Granite
  • Vineyard Area: 3 Hectares (only 7.4 acres!)
  • Hand harvested
  • Vines are fertilized with natural compost
  • Yields are severely limited by both pruning and green harvest, even for the grapes that go into the Nouveau
  • Grapes are harvested manually and vinified without SO2
  • Wines are fermented naturally
  • Rosé made by direct press
  • Full malolactic fermentation
  • Vinfied and aged in stainless steel tank
  • Aged for 3 months before bottling

 

Domaine de la Prébende –

Domaine de la Prébende Domaine de la Prébende produces a deeply mineral Beaujolais from a predominantly clay and limestone terroir, a rarity in a region dominated by granite soils. “Une prébende” essentially means “a tax,” and the domaine sits on the location where monks used to collect taxes from the villagers. As Ghislaine Dupeuble puts it, “Monks didn’t like to own low end vineyards!”

The grapes are harvested manually and vinified completely without SO2. The wines are not chaptalized, filtered, or degassed and only natural yeasts are used for the fermentation.

The wines of Dupeuble represent some of the best values in the Beaujolais today and are widely regarded for their very high quality and eminently reasonable price.

 

In the hamlet of Le Breuil, deep in the southern Beaujolais and perched above a narrow creek, the Domaine Dupeuble has been running almost continuously since 1512. The name of the domaine has changed just three times in its history, most recently when the last heir, Anna Asmaquer, married Jules Dupeuble in 1919. Anna’s son Paul, and her grand children Ghislaine and Stéphane Dupeuble, manage the domaine. Kermit first met Ghislaine and Stéphane’s father, Damien, for lunch in Paris in the late 1980s, and thus began the annual tradition of blending the KLWM Beaujolais Nouveau.

Tradition runs deep in the family, but each generation has also managed to add something new, including increasing the property. Today it is comprised of one hundred hectares, about forty percent of which is consecrated to vineyards. Strong advocates of the lutte raisonnée approach to vineyard work, they tend their vines without the use of any chemicals or synthetic fertilizers. The vineyards, planted primarily to Gamay, face Southeast, South, and Southwest, and about two thirds of the property is on granite-based soil.

 

30 Days of Rosé | #09 | Bone Jolly | Edmunds St. John | Gamay Noir Rosé | El Dorado County | 2016

30 Days of Rosé | #09 | Bone Jolly | Gamay Noir Rosé | El Dorado County | 2016

Rustle your bones and try a lively Rosé from one of the highest (elevation) California vineyards!

From edmundsstjohn.com:

Bone-Jolly Gamay Noir Rosé:

The 2014 vintage in California was the second in a row substantially affected by  severe drought.  Despite very limited irrigation in the vineyards we work with, the available soil moisture was so greatly diminished by early August that the vines ripening process was accelerated before much sugar had accumulated in the grapes. Fortunately the weather stayed pretty even, and the early and rapid harvest produced exceptionally high quality fruit. Alcohols were low, acidity was strong, and energy and freshness were hallmarks of the resulting wines. Case in point: our 2014 Bone-Jolly Gamay Noir Rosé

FRUIT SOURCE:

Witters Vineyard At 3400’ elevation, above Camino, in the eastern reaches of the Apple Hill region. Soil is Aiken series vocanic clay-loam. The property was, for many years, a pear orchard, but in 2000 Bob Witters followed Ron Mansfield’s recommendation, and planted four acres of Gamay for us. Since 2011, we’ve used the Gamay from Witters exclusively for rosé.

WINEMAKING NOTES:

Picked August 18th at a bit under 21 Brix, with a 3.28pH. Grapes were de-stemmed into the press, and pressed immediately. Juice fermented very cool at 55-60F, till dryness at mid-September, at which point the malo was blocked.

WINEMAKER’S TASTING NOTES:

Pretty pale-pink color with a little blue around the rim. Very fresh, penetrating nose . Juicy and precise on the palate, mouth-watering, showing lot of depth. The finish is long, and clean. This is already really versatile at the table, as always. Alcohol is 12.6%

Witters Vineyard:

Before 2000, Bob Witters’ property was planted to Bartlett pears, for quite some time. But by 1999, the pressure of global economics drove the market price for Bob’s pears so low that it didn’t make sense for him to keep farming them. The market for wine grapes, on the other hand, was expanding, and Bob had a conversation with Ron Mansfield about putting in a vineyard to replace his pears.

Since Edmunds St. John had been working with Ron at that point for a dozen years, we spoke about Bob’s site, and it seemed like it might be a really good site for Gamay, a grape that had been on our radar for some time. Ron conferred with Bob, and in the Spring of 2000, four acres were planted to Gamay, the first planting of real Gamay in California in a generation!

Witters is situated at 3,400 feet elevation, making it one of the highest vineyards in California. The soil is volcanic clay-loam, and the land slopes gently down to the North. At that elevation, temperatures are generally pretty mild, and nights can be quite cool. The risk for frost in the Spring is fairly high, and there have been a couple of years where crop losses were substantial.

About:

First Principles – I didn’t get into the wine business until I’d been on this earth for 25 years.  I’ve spent the last 29 years trying to steer Edmunds St. John through the maelstrom of the marketplace while simultaneously attempting to bring something new to the landscape of California wine.  Who knows what’s next? I just might have a few more tricks up my sleeve!

Winemaking isn’t Rocket Science; it’s an ancient, relatively straightforward process that should yield, in any wine, a precise expression of the vineyard and the season that produced it.

86 Mourvedre

Given grapes farmed attentively, with vines in optimal balance, the key to producing a wine that is an elemental, unfettered expression of its origin in place and time is being able to pick at that point closest to the moment when the flavor in the grapes has come fully into focus, a moment that is usually also when that flavor is most energetic.  The window is fairly small. After the grapes are picked, I’m trying not to add or subtract anything from the raw material.

In 1987 a wine grower from a venerable domaine in Southern France visited our cellar, and tasted a number of wines from the harvest just past. When he came to the one from my favorite vineyard his response was dramatic: he raised his nose from the glass, slowly rolling his eyes upward in reverie. He sighed, and whispered, “la terre parle” (the earth speaks). If I have done my job well, when you taste our wine you may be similarly affected; this is a voice one longs to hear.

It is our goal to produce wines of the highest level of quality, integrity, and authenticity, the hallmarks of which are balance, nuance, and elegance, wines that express their origins in place and time, wines through which “the earth speaks” in a clear and strong voice. As a winemaker, for me there is no other voice.

After three decades, there are still many people who have not heard of us, but of those who have, most of them seem to say “Oh, yes; Edmunds St. John–they make great wines!”

Steve Edmunds, 2015