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| Drinking Windows and Values |
| Drinking window: Drink between 2019 and 2027 (based on 25 user opinions) |
| Community Tasting History |
| Community Tasting Notes (average 91.5 pts. and median of 91 pts. in 4 notes) - hiding notes with no text | | | Tasted by Blog on 11/11/2021: 100 % Sauvignon blanc en macération pelliculaire, ce qui explique la robe d'un doré profond, presque cuivrée.
Au nez impossible pour moi de reconnaitre un Sauvignon, aucun des marqueurs variétaux du cépage, même pas d'agrumes, on est plutôt sur des arômes murs autours des la poire, la pèche.
Un vin totalement sec contrairement à ce que laissait supposer le nez, c'est large, aromatique, il y a du volume, une sensation presque tanique. C'est vraiment surprenant et je trouve ça très réussi, même si on ne peut pas qualifier ça de très digeste, on n'en boirait pas des sceaux ...
J'ai l'impression que la macération pelliculaire donne une identité aromatique forte et immédiate, au détriment toutefois de la complexité qui n'apparait pas pour le moment. Je me demande ce que ça peut donner au vieillissement. (245 views) | | | Tasted by Seafoam Manor on 7/2/2021 & rated 92 points: Deep gold, with peach and orange tones, letting you know what you're in for right from the jump. Relative to orange "natty" wines, this is very clean on the nose, giving you all sorts of dried orchard, citrus and pit fruits and sweet baking spices. It steers well clear of the "VA, brett and oxidation just give this 'character'" camp.
It sounds weird to say with this type of wine, but the nose is very much in line with the palate. All the fruit has a dried / preserved quality to it, with a strong dried apricot being the dominant note. It is accompanied by a slightly salty Meyer lemon note, orange zest, maybe a bit of baked apple, cinnamon, cloves and an unexpected dose of mineral notes. In a way, it feels like a collection of Thanksgiving and Christmas desserts. This drinks with a pretty high level of traditional complexity, rather than a grab bag of weird flavors that you can get in a lot of orange wines. The acid is there, but probably on the lower end of medium, although there is a good tannic grip, which would be unremarkable in a red, but feels more like a medium+ in this context. Drinks like a lighter bodied red. Quite long on the finish.
Certainly not a wine for everyone, but this is an excellent example of the style, where the unusual flavors feel intentionally crafted in a way that I usually reserve for Radikon and Gravner. (346 views) | | | Tasted by Biggsy on 4/23/2021 & rated 91 points: Was quite shy on opening. Better on day 2. Powerful aromas of burnt sugar and apricot. Mid-weight with a touch of grip and good refreshing acidity. The flavours hold back till the finish but linger long; nice toffee and stone fruits with a touch of cigar. Very enjoyable over three nights - maybe even got better each night. (322 views) | | | Tasted by fred o. on 6/29/2019: brunch: Orangey golden color. Nose fruity orange, pithy. Palate with balanced fruit and minerals, some papaya tropical fruit with time, rounded mouthfeel with good depth. Very interesting to try this, honestly wasn't sure what to expect, but it was well-crafted and enjoyable. 90 pts (563 views) |
| Scholium Project Producer Website
THE AIM
The aim of my winemaking is an activity; or more properly, a set and series of activities. The first set of acitivites is the winemaking itself, from studying and attending to the vineyard, to imagining when to pick the grapes, to smelling the fermentation begin . . . and on to bringing the wine to bottle. The making of the wine is, in this sense, an end in itself.
But wine has the remarkable ability to preserve within itself not only the character of a vineyard, a growing season, a fermentation– but it does so in a way that is portable. You can put it in a bottle and give it to a friend, or set it adrift in the vast sea of the market, so that it finds itself eventually in the hands, on the table, of a perfect stranger.
This possibility raises a second set of activities– those that are separate and beyond the making of the wine iteself. These are the activities that the wine can inspire and engender in others who drink it.
Beyond the essential bacchic activities that almost any wine can inspire, I have three particular ones in mind: the wines should make one feel and think of complexity. Not the complexity of arguments or syllogisms, but this kind of complexity: imagine the flat asphalt of a new mall's parking lot. Imagine the same asphalt cracked and broken after years of weathering, traffic, ground shifting underneath it. The pointless complexity of these cracks can be a feast for the eyes, even if it means nothing. The wines should present a similar complexity for their consumer to feast on.
The wines should make one sense decay, decomposition, transformation. The wines should be so distinctly wine and not fruit that one can sense both the yeast and the bacteria, on the one hand, and the passage of time, on the other hand, that transformed the unspoiled fruit into a new substance. The wines must capture and preserve decay and age.
The wines should make you happy that you are drinking them.
THE PRINCIPLES
Specificity of vineyards: our fruit comes from the small vineyards of individual farmers. These vineyards offer sites or farming practices, or both, that cannot be duplicated. For this reason, each wine is a single-vineyard bottling and bears the name of its vineyard. We work very closely with each farmer as partner rather than client. The winemaking is inevitably guided by the fruit that the vineyard produces; but the winemaker may reciprocally influence the farming of the vineyards. But much more important than influencing, or much worse, shaping, the vineyard to the winemaker's needs– much more important is to discover excellence in the vineyard and then attend to and exalt it.
Husbandry of microbes: once we have harvested the fruit, our prime task is husbanding the microbial population of our wines. We do this by interfering as little as possible in the spontaneous development of a natural (if invisible) ecology in our fermenting wine. We do not sterilize the must, we do not add commercial yeasts. If the developing system veers toward winemaking disaster, we intervene. If not, we add and take away nothing. We observe the developing system through the signs available to our senses: we taste, we smell, we measure temperature. We punch down, pumpover, and sometimes chill the must to delay or slow down a given activity–but outside of these activities, we do nothing to interfere in the development of a stable and complex living system in our wines.
Undisturbed maturation: in general, the flavors that we seek in our wines come from ripe fruit, long macerations, and long maturation in barrel. When one of our wines demands by its own nature a variation from these principles, we vary (see the 2004 Glos). Otherwise, we seek to transmute the fruit, not to preserve it. We seek not the primary aromas of the freshly-sliced apple or the just-bitten plum, but the secondary and tertiary aromas of rose petals, chocolate, roast coffee, dried fruits, hung game, old leather, dried mushrooms, a broken firecracker. These aromas depend most of all on the undisturbed elevation of the wine in barrel. No sulfur is added in barrel, the wines are topped seldom, and they remain in barrel until they develop a ripeness that is peculiar to wine, not fruit. During this period of maturation, the microbes reach equilibrium and the wine become used to air. The result are wines that are sturdy and prone neither to bacterial spoilage nor to oxidation. They are used to, and have overcome, these threats before they ever make it into bottle. The wines that did not survive this rigorous elevage never see a bottle. They disappear.
Vineyard designation: the foundation of these wines is the vineyard that produces each one. The winemaking is very much the same for each wine. The character of the vineyard and the microbiology of the barrels each dwarfs the range of possible characteristics suggested by various varietals. For this reason, varietal designation has seemed insignificant for this project. A given wine is not a "cab" or a "merlot" in this project; it is a Tenbrink or a Hudson. Typical designations of appelation are not useful here for similar reasons. One wine is not "Napa" in character, while another is "Monterey." The specificity of the vineyard is so much more significant than the appelation that we avoid such a general (and non-specific) designation. On the other hand, the realm in which all of the project's vineyards are found is the dream-world of California. For this reason, all of the wines bear the California appelation and a single vineyard designation.
Sauvignon Blanc Varietal CharacterUSAAmerican wine has been produced since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in New Mexico in 1628. Today, wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84% of all U.S. wine. The continent of North America is home to several native species of grape, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis vulpina, but the wine-making industry is based almost entirely on the cultivation of the European Vitis vinifera, which was introduced by European settlers. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France.California2021 vintage: "Unlike almost all other areas of the state, the Russian River Valley had higher than normal crops in 2021, which has made for a wine of greater generosity and fruit forwardness than some of its stablemates." - Morgan Twain-Peterson Sonoma CountyMendocino County |
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