by Serena on July 18, 2011
We had the pleasure of pouring for two days in San Francisco last week. Sonoma in the City is a great event where you get to taste a bunch of wines all from Sonoma County. Why is that so cool? – because you get to see how various producers in one AVA or across the various regions in the county approach their wine making. For example, you could taste our Pinot Noir from Floodgate Vineyard in the Russian River Valley and then walk around the table to compare it to Gary Farrell’s Alysian Pinot Noir also from Floodgate Vineyard.
What I truly loved about these two tastings were the great comments we received. People who did not want to sample our Gewürztraminer “because it’s sweet” tasted our 2010 Floodgate Vineyard Gewürztraminer and loved that it has the classic floral, honeysuckle nose but is lean and dry on the palate (not sweet at all). The 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Pinot Noir got rave reviews for having the fruit flavors in balance with the subtle earth and loamy characters that make Pinot such a wonderful wine. The two comments I heard repeated several times were “it has so many layers,” as well as, “really, 2009? I thought it was an 07.” I think the four clones (667, 777, 828, Pommard) used give this wine a great deal of complexity that should deepen as it ages. We’re very eager to watch this wine evolve.
For more info on Sonoma County Vintners and other upcoming events, go to: http://www.sonomawine.com/. We will be pouring at the Sonoma Wine Country Weekend in August. Tickets are on sale now for the Taste of Sonoma at MacMurray Ranch and other events over the Labor Day weekend. For Taste of Sonoma Tickets, click here.
Hope we see you in Healdsburg at the tasting room or at MacMurray Ranch.
- Serena
by Serena on June 21, 2011
We spent Saturday 6/18/11 in San Francisco at Fort Mason pouring our 2009 Floodgate and Perli Pinot noir at the San Francisco Pinot Days grand tasting. We have not yet released the 2009 vintage so it was fun for us to hear people’s thoughts on the wines, which we love and can’t be more thrilled that 2009 was the year we made the leap into Northern California making our home and wines from the vineyards around us.
Brandye Alexander took this fun photo of our Pinot noir as we were setting up
We poured the 2009 Floodgate Vineyard Pinot noir from the Russian River Valley, and the 2009 Perli Vineyard Pinot noir from Mendicino Ridge. Considering we pick these grapes at nearly the same time. their flavor profiles are wildly different owing to the classic foggy RRV days juxtaposed to the rugged mountain terrain and proximity of the Pacific ocean in the Perli Vineyard.
We had great conversations about temperature inversion, slope, flooding, and other nerdy ag related stuff with the smart folks wandering around tasting Pinot. That passion for grape growing from the attendees is something we love about this crowd. Because the focus is on Pinot, we get to have really detailed and geeky conversations about the winemaking and growing conditions. If we were pouring other varietals as well, we would not have had the time to go into such depth with folks.
Grape nerds unite!
It was also so exciting to be able to officially invite everybody to come visit our tasting room that will be open in July downtown Healdsburg.
Brandye and Alan are ready to pour some Pinot
So to all of our friends, old and new, and wine making friends who share our devotion to this amazing grape, cheers for making this a great event.
Serena & Alan getting ready to pour (photo by Brandye Alexander)
See you in the tasting room!
Serena
by Serena on June 6, 2011
While the silence on our blog was deafening, we were heads down building our new tasting room! We found a space in Healdsburg about 2 blocks from the central square. Because our focus is on small, handcrafted lots, we got together with another winemaker (Christian Stark of Stark Wine) who is also a boutique wine producer and decided to launch a tasting room and microwinery.
What does that mean? It means we have an awesome tasting room space where you can come taste all of our wines as well as hang out on the patio and enjoy the warm afternoons and evenings this summer with a glass of wine. The tasting room will always be staffed by either one of the winemakers or owners of Cartograph or Stark wine. Between Cartograph and Stark we will be able to offer a tasting that includes Gewürztraminer, Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Syrah.
In addition, our space is a bonded winery which means we will be producing wine in that same space. So, you’ll be able to dip into barrels with us and get a real hands on winemaking experience.
We are really excited to see this project coming to fruition. We’ve spent numerous days and night building the space with the help of several friends. We should be finished building the tasting bar in the next ten days. The final furniture delivery happens tomorrow. Right now we’re focused on building a really cool chandelier (made from de-stemmer gears!), finishing the lighting, making tables, and finalizing the numerous licenses and permits in order to open this summer!
We’ll keep you posted on our official opening and get some photos up soon.
by Serena on October 3, 2010
We picked two different lots of Pinot noir last week. Both lots went from the vineyard to the winery for crushing/de-stemming and then into tanks to undergo a cold maceration (“cold soak”). Keeping the grape juice and skins in a cool environment for a couple of days makes several things happen:
- compounds from the grapes get extracted into the must
- color is extracted from the skins which helps create a darker colored juice
- the aromatics of the wine are increased as elements from the skins, seeds, and grape body seep into the juice
- it reduces the chances of a spontaneous fermentation
Pinot noir macerating
In one of our lots, a spontaneous fermentation began on day 3 so we let it kick off for a day before inoculating it with yeast. We’ll go into detail about inoculation in another post.
- Serena
On a recent Saturday evening we shared an amazing vineyard tour and meal at Floodgate Vineyard with several of Cartograph’s biggest supporters. It was a great group of people who have been involved with Cartograph since it’s inception. We couldn’t have made it this far without support from an incredible network of family and friends.
Floodgate vineyard manager Warren Burton, his wife Bobbi and the Floodgate crew put on a truly impressive event for us. We started the evening with beers in the shade and then hopped on board a hayride for a tour of the vineyard. We made several stops to check out the various grape varieties and enjoyed wine made from those grapes at each stop. Paired with each wine was an appetizer tailored to match the wine served. Looking back it really was a mind boggling amount of food and wine that we got to sample. It was especially fun to be drinking our 2009 Gewürztraminer while walking our Gewürz block and talking about how the grapes are grown.
The Floodgate property is absolutely gorgeous with flowers, gardens and many different clones of Pinot noir planted as well as Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon blanc and a little bit of Riesling.
The very first few vines to start veraison (when the grapes turn purple) were in the foreground of the picture to the left. (Pinot clone 667)
We’re looking forward to releasing our first Cartograph Pinot Noir from Floodgate in the fall of 2010. It was a treat to try two great Floodgate Pinots while on the tour. We were able to taste both the C. Donatiello Block 15 Pinot as well as Gary Farrell’s Floodgate Pinot from his new Alysian label. Both were showing wonderfully and it got us all very excited about the future wines from Floodgate. There are some vines just hitting their stride here and Warren has them dialed in perfectly.
Our thanks to Bobbi, Warren, Marlene, Maxine and Adam for giving us such a wonderful evening among the vines.
Alan
