On September 21, in the midst of harvesting verdelho and chardonnay, fermenting pinot noir, monitoring a dozen vineyards, and learning how to work in a new winery– in the midst of all of this, we bottled three of the four final white wines from the 2006 harvest (only the Sylphs remains in barrel). These wines required this after-summer bottling for one shared reason: their fermentations slowed down or stopped last winter and did not revive in time for the spring bottling. Each one of these wines woke up some time late this spring, and by the beginning of harvest, each was dry– having not just aged for a year, but fermented for a year!

We also bottled for the first time wines under the Tenbrink label; I mention them here because I am the winemaker and because the Tenbrinks are the new hosts of (and collaborators with) the Scholium Project.

These are the wines we bottled:

Whole cluster pressed Pinot Grigio. Large and dense.

Crushed to press Sauvignon. Precise, pure, rich, tightly wound.

Skin-fermented Sauvignon. honeyed, complex. stern in structure.

In the ripe and somewhat oxidized style of Meursault. Not as extreme or intense as Sylphs or Nereides, but cut from the same cloth.

Dark fruit, earth, saddle. Restraint, not fruit.