The grapes were sourced in January 2005 from Brehm Vineyards as frozen must. I bought 40 litres of clone 115 and fermented warm using Assmanhausen yeast over 5 days, punching down the cap twice daily. Extended maceration lasted just two days, and I aged the free-run in a 23 litre carboy and the pressed wine in a 1 gallon jug. Both were aged for 8 months in glass with an addition of 1/2 lbs of French Oak cubes.

Unfortunately, I didn't add enough DAP during fermentation, so the free-run had a considerable amount of H2S after 8 months. Surprisingly, the pressed wine did not have any H2S at all. 2ppm of copper sulphate was added to the free-run which remove the smell. The wine was racked off the copper after a few weeks.

The wine ended up fairly thin and full of typical Carneros funk, so a fair amount of blending was required to make it palatable. After numerous trials with the help of Sasha Verhage at Eno Wines, we ultimately added 16% Eno Wines 2004 SLH Pinot Noir to fill out the mouthfeel and 4% ENO Wines 2002 RRV Pinot Noir to add strawberry & cherry flavours and notes.

The wine has starting to show really well after a year in bottle (as of Dec 2006). The SLH addition has definitely helped round out the mouthfeel and the cherry and berry flavours are coming throught nicely. Almost all post-fermentation bitterness and funk has fallen out of the wine completely.

I'm quite happy with how this turned out: with some heavy-handed intervention, an otherwise poor fermentation was salvaged and an tasty wine was produced.