Maresh Vineyard
Daedalus Cellars recently planted Estate vineyard
Our vineyard managers are admirably reliable. The fruit we receive always is of the first-order of physical integrity and cleanliness; nonetheless, we glacially sort all of our fruit at the winery; a final physical inspection, but also a final opportunity for aesthetic assessment, as we seek to remove any cluster that might offend our sensibilities of greenness.
We de-stem between 0 and 100% of our fruit. We add between a whollop and no sulfur dioxide, a near universally applied prophylactic against “unusual” fermentations. We prefer to seek the unique response of each vineyard block in each vintage. We lower the temperature of the must to less than 50˚F, and regularly blanket the top of the fermentor with dry ice (solid CO2) to protect the juice from oxygen. Then, we do nothing. Regularly, we add more dry ice and do nothing. “Some point” has become increasingly long in coming, but at some point, say after two or three weeks, the fermentor develops some signs of restlessness. Now we stop adding dry ice, while also doing nothing else. As we await the spontaneous on-set of fermentation, we do not add enzymes, tannins, nutrients, supplements, acid, or other homogenizing adjuncts. Most importantly, we do not add commercial strains of yeast. We believe that each vineyard’s unique characteristics are best expressed by the micro-floræ that naturally co-exist on its grapes.
We allow the grapes’ resident yeast, and other microbes, to conduct the fermentation. Each in its turn adds a stratum of expression and builds dimension. Such fermentations, when carefully managed, can be quite long; ideal, we think, for optimal extraction, skirting confected over-extraction. Only as needed, we submerse and break-up the mass of solids forced to the top of the fermenting juice.
When no sugar remains, and sometimes well after, we drain the new wine directly
to barrels. The pomace is pressed and also drained by gravity to small
settling vessels. We move the settled press wine to barrels and wait. We
use 20% new French oak barrels, primarily from a single cooper. With
the age of our vineyards and the intensity of our fruit, we see little need
to obscure vineyard character with wood.
Eventually, with little help from us, each barrel undergoes a malo-lactic fermentation. Afterward, the wines’ acid is softened, its fruit grows more focused, and its texture more refined, all serving to give the wines length and persistence. Here we add a small amount of sulfur dioxide to preserve the fruit through further development, and again we wait.
We have bottled anywhere from 11 to 17 months after harvest, always depending upon the qualities of the vintage. We typically begin the serious blending around a month before bottling. We exhaust every blending possibility and re-confirm our first impressions several times. Everything we do to this point obsesses over capturing the most powerful expression of a vineyard. The blending process strives to balance power and elegance, while also balancing and preserving the identifiable expression of each vineyard’s attributes.
Ten to 14 days before bottling, we carefully rack each barrel by gravity. The blends composed, we send each wine to a laboratory. Our passionate, informed belief is that unfined, unfiltered wines are the best, all things being equal. I have fined one wine and filtered two more. Each certainly lost something in the process; however, we refuse to act dogmatically. If the laboratory finds that a wine bottled without filtration will run an appreciable risk of microbial spoilage in the bottle, we will filter it. I believe that to do otherwise would be irresponsible.
We give our red wines at least six months to age in the bottle, more if at all possible. They need it. We have two straightforward objectives for our wines. We like food, and expect our wines to offer good accompaniment to a wide variety of foods. Thus the importance of acid in our wines, and our obsession with texture. We also expect our wines to age. All of our most memorable wine moments featured mature wines. We believe that wine only becomes truly transcendental with age. These aims lead, more often than not, to rather restrained young wines. We recommend decanting our red wines for at least three years after release, our white wines for at least the first year. Then tell us what you think. We think our wines are worth the wait.
Jezebel is our second label. Our goal is to blend wines that are highly
approachable and full of character. It is a negoçiant brand, but
we produce from 30 to 100% of each blend ourselves. Our approach to making
Jezebel is completely different. We pick the grapes earlier and cold-soak
them less. We use a dizzying array of cultured yeasts on these fermentations.
This lends an interesting array of fruit expression, at the affordable cost
of some loss in complexity. The fermentations are, of course, much shorter.
While we still avoid the homogenizing effects of enzymes, nutrients and other “enhancements,”
we certainly are less dogmatic about Jezebel. She aims to please, after
all, and who are we to question her methods.
Under the Jezebel label we produce just three wines: “Blanc,” a blend of whatever white fruit or juice we can find; “Rouge,” a blend of the best available big red varietals, usually with some McDuffee Syrah added for gravitas; and a Pinot Noir.
