Roussanne

There is not a tremendous amount of roussanne grown in this country because it is somewhat annoying in its habits. The growers struggle with it because it ripens incredibly late and the winemakers struggle because it ripens incredibly unevenly. Oftentimes, the rest of the vineyard has long ago been picked clean (of syrah, grenache, mourvedre…) but the roussanne will have, on a single vine, one cluster that is green, one yellow, one gold, one amber, one russet and one gnarled with botrytis. We let the fruit hang until about 85% of the fruit is perfectly ripe; amber-skinned, seeds deeply brown, and harvest the entire block. At this point we see a range of maturity from pale and flush with acid to leather-skinned and touched with botrytis. To work with the variation with the greatest level of precision, we slow down the sorting table tenfold and collate the fruit by color; first cluster by cluster and then berry by berry. The lighter, higher-acid fruit goes directly to the press for ten to eighteen hours. The challenge is to figure out a way to make a complete and totally gentle extraction of the aromas in the thick-skinned berries and often-present (and welcome) botrytis. To this end, we macerate and ferment this fruit on the skins for three to five days, gently washing the skins with the juice twice a day, just until the fermentation progresses far enough that the aromatics crack open and rise from the fruit. This allows us access to aromas that would never occur were we to go directly to the press and allows us to extract them in a very gentle way. Each of these fractions is barrel fermented and goes through full malo in barrel. The wines remain in barrel, sur lie, for a year before we pull a sample from each the barrels and blend to find a cuvée that comes together with the greatest complexity and beauty.

Grenache

We began working with a single acre of grenache on an undulating slope of Bien Nacido Vineyard in 2015. With all of the wines, from all varieties, we believe the highest achievement, the clearest marker of beauty is when the wine holds both intensity and levity in the same form. 

In general, there is a real energy to the wine; not shy or hesitant, but also not heavy. If we were to speak on the wine stylistically, it would be more in the vein of CDP rather than Spanish Garnacha.

Gold Series

The Gold Series wines, like Antica Terra’s Aequorin & Obelin, are bottled when something on the blending table calls out as unique. These usually demand to be bottled separately. No better, no worse, just distinctive and complete on their own.

Sometimes this means a distinctive parcel, sometimes it’s a power in a few samples that will require an extra year in barrel before they are put on the blending table once again. The difference in bottlings varies year to year.

Syrah

The Lillian wines reflect an acceptance of gifts that come with the sun — abundance, intensity, and depth of character — while seeking to illuminate the refined detail and subtleties in between. Energetic and vivid in the glass, the syrah offers tremendous aromatic intensity and freshness to play off the dark fruit, its precision and delineation balances its true gravitas.