Winemaking

2007 vintage

The winter was unusually dry, leading to an early bud break. The growing season was generally even and long, with a few heat spikes in late spring and late summer. Berry size was very small, some looking more like blueberries, with excellent flavor and concentration. Harvest was ideal and unhurried, with high quality across the board. Our only problem was a poor set in the Russian River Valley, resulting in a lot of shot berries. This meant diligent sorting was required to remove the high sugar raisins from reaching the fermentor and spiking sugars as well as adding prune like flavors to the wines. One day, we removed 600 pounds! These efforts were well worth it. Wines from both Carneros and the Russian River are complex, with great balance and well developed tannins and will continue to develop in the coming years.

At Lutea, we always harvest at first morning light so the grapes arrive cool to the winery. We harvest the fruit using secateurs (scissors), instead of blades, because the fruit is handled more gently with berries left intact rather than pulled off the vine. We also make every effort to harvest on a fruit day according to the biodynamic calendar. Once the grapes arrive at the winery, they are sorted to remove any imperfect grapes. The clusters are destemmed into small open top fermentors and allowed to cold soak for about 5 days before slowly beginning their fermentation. During fermentation, they are punched down by hand three times a day before being pressed at dryness. Only French oak barrels are used, and the wines are aged between 10-16 months before bottling. Our wines are minimally handled and only racked one or two times prior to bottling, and never fined or filtered. Because of this, our wines have residual carbon dioxide from their malolactic fermentation. Carbon dioxide is an excellent natural preservative and is left in our wines to protect them. Because of it, we can keep our sulfur levels quite low, always well under 100ppm which is the maximum for organically grown wines and of help to those who are sensitive to sulphites. We recommend decanting Lutea Pinot Noir.

Notes from the 2006 Harvest.