Well it is a 100 point bottle tonight. My girlfriend and I visited the winery a few months ago,sadly the decision was made last minute and I didn’t get in touch with John to meet him. We did have a great tasting and enjoyed all of his wines but the one that made Jess was his late-harvest Gewurz. Seeing as it was on sale that day, I bought her a bottle.
Fast forward to tonight. She is moving to NYC tomorrow and I won’t be seeing too much of her until I move up in two months. So I thought this would be a perfect bottle to sip on while we cleaned the condo and packed up her stuff.
2006 Holdredge Late Harvest Gewurz Saralee’s Vineyard - Yellow/gold color. Very exotic and exciting on the nose. Lots of rosewater, spice, dried apricot. It has a good body to it but very well balanced acidity to keep it fresh. It’s drinking great right now after being out of the fridge for an hour and getting closer to room temperature. Tonight it is the perfect bottle of wine!
This is the same vineyard that Swan sources Pinot from? Who has any information on the vineyard? Who else buys fruit? Where is it? What varietals does it have? Etc.
Excellent report, Mike…we have just a bit remaining of a 375 ml bottle that was opened at a winemaker’s dinner last Friday…a run-up to Pinot Days So Cal. Twas great then and even as late as last nite this was pure and refreshing.
Killer stuff, even if made by an attourney (“lawyer” spelled accurately, per he of the red codpiece.)
Mike- Over the years, many wineries have made wines from that vineyard. Of course, Rod Berglund gets whatever he wants because he is a favored son so to speak. Me? I get Rod’s scraps. But Merry Edwards, Gary Farrell, Patz and Hall, and more other Pinot producers than you can easily list have made wine from there. Then, add in the Chard, Sauv blanc, marssane, rousanne, pinot gris, etc etc etc and the list of wineries grows to massive. Add in the kind hearted nature of SaraLee and her meticulous approach to growing and you understand why.
In 2006 there was a massive amount of botrytis in the Russian River Valley. We make a late harvest Pinot Gris in such years- our love of SGN wines and our inability to afford them given two kids led us to make our own. Long story very short, Saralee played my like a stupid trout ntil I convinced myself that I “needed” to make a late harvest Gewurtz that year. (She got me to do it again the next year, but I went in a different direction and made an off-dry Gewurtz that rocks with Thai/chinese/Indian food).
In 2006, Bob Cabral also made a late Harvest Gewurtz from there, but from a different block. I think it is stunning, but they may be sold out (they also do one every couple years from Vista Verde). I believe someone else did as well, but cannot presently recall who. I tried to sell Berglund some of my late harvest PG juice, but he would have none of it (knowing how tough it is to sell sweet wines). The first “human” to taste the Gewurtz juice was our own Stuart Fishler (I dont count as “human” given my day job)
This one was pressed off whole cluster (As we load the press botrytis spores waft through the room like a cloud of dust, and it was board member “Colonel” Klepper who coined the phrase “botrytis- nature’s asbestos”). We did a 9 hour press (real slow), settled out overnight (the fruit arrived at around 39 degrees- it was well into November), and then fermented wild and slow- about 16 weeks. IIRC the brix was 38 or so. I stopped the ferment with13.6 alc (heftier than a typical Alsatian counterpart) and in excess of 10% RS. The ph was 3.27 (yes, I acidulated the beejesus out of it without any reservations or guilt whatsoever) and with the low ph it did not go through ML. The closeset it got to oak was when I passed by the tank with barrels on a forklift, and it was unfined, unfiltered, so it can throw a touch of sediment.
i’m glad you enjoyed it- check out the WS version too if it is available.
was his late-harvest Gewurz. Seeing as it was on sale that day, I bought her a bottle.