Llewelyn "Whole Earth" Gewurztraminer 2024
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Notes from the winemaker Pete Bloomberg:
2024 was a pretty crazy year, with almost 75% of the harvest happening within a two-week period. I am not omnipresent and cannot be in more than one place at a time, so all of the whites that year came in at a minimum 14.5% potential alcohol. There were some serious heat spikes and dehydration, and what this means, though, is that while there are somewhat dangerous levels of sugar for the way I make wine, the chemistry for acidity is that of one's wildest dreams. This is a 15% alcohol wine that is completely dry and yet has the acidity of a 12% wine. For my technical readers, this came in at 25 brix and 3.1 pH. Capital C Crazy.
In light of the high potential alcohol and high potential for failure, I couldn't direct press this. I floated the minimum amount of destemmed grapes on top of the pressed juice until dry, just enough for the grapes to form a cap I could move around. This was somewhere around 10–15% skins to juice for a month of maceration, with twice-daily pump-overs to encourage a healthy fermentation. Once it was finally dry, the juice was moved into barrel where it sat for 18 months. I usually like to let time take over the whites (I am sort of refusing to call this skin contact, despite the obvious). This was already tasting pretty mature with the flavors of beautiful oxidation at 18 months, and I didn't want to lose all the alluring aromatics. So I bottled it a little earlier than expected. Compositionally, this wine is singing. Alsace, I am coming for you. Beauty, grace, and power; all the aspects I long for. I find success in my own attempts pretty rarely, but am elated when it works. My favorite wines are like these, where I attempt to carve the most rudimentary sculpture out of stone, and let the weathering of time and oxygen slowly sand it down, molding it into something more beautiful than the sum of its parts.
tl;dr: Long, infusion-style maceration of Gewurz from the most beautiful part of
California. Big Power. Big Coconut. Night Blooming Jasmine. Rose Oil.
Tangerine Rinds. Lavender Almonds.
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