Release Letter:
Yeah, quite the name huh? I wanted to call it “Stockie” but Chris protested the name due to years of painful childhood clothes shopping experiences. I mean, I would not mind if we called the wine “Precocious” or “Pretenaturally Talented” despite MY childhood memories, but whatever. The real story behind the wine goes back to our trips to France and Italy. There, in the cellars of Conterno, Tempier, Canarelli, Graillot and many more we tasted wines from vessels made by an Austrian cooper called Stockinger. The wines were invariably our favorite in every cellar, showing the textural kiss that we love from oak treatment with little, if any, of the overt aromatic hit of the oak. After three years of being told that Stockinger would not export to the United States, we began to scheme. First, one of our winemaking friends in France or Italy would order the barrels and foudres and then we would arrange shipment to the New World. Thankfully, another good friend, one lesser known sommelier cum winemaker named Rajat Parr, somehow talked the Stockinger family into exporting a small number of barrels into the US of A. Needless to say, our barrel budget for the year got blown up and we could not be happier about it. The only new oak on this wine comes from barrels fabricated in Waidhofen, Austria (for John Irving fans one of the settings for Hotel New Hampshire) by the masters at Stockinger. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

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