The Vintage

2002 will be remembered as an incredible vintage, one that produced wines of wonderful richness and deep dark color. Sometimes the quality of the vintage reveals itself from the very beginning. The aromas coming out of the fermenter are quite evolved early on and you recognize the resulting wine will be fantastic.

Spring was free of rain and set was again quite good. The cluster weights were reduced giving a good skin to juice ratio. The summer remained rain free and warmer weather patterns persisted throughout the spring and into the summer. We harvested 1.6 tons from our one acre at Gold Coast on September 23rd.

Gold Coast Vineyard is located on Foxen Canyon Road six miles east of Santa Maria atop a bluff at Fulgar's Point. Nineteen acres of Pinot were planted in 1989 on 6 X 10 spacing trellised to a vertical shoot position. The scion wood is a Martini selection taken from Sierra Madre Vineyard located nearby in Santa Maria Valley and the soil is comprised of Sorrento Sandy Loam.

The Production

Only the best Pinot Noir grape clusters are handpicked in the vineyard in the early morning hours when the fruit is still cool. Pinot Noir has a tendency to ferment very quickly thus preventing full color and flavor extraction. To arrest the on-set of immediate fermentation, dry ice is added to small open top fermenting vats. This "cold soak" (at 40 °F) slows fermentation while saturating the juice with rich fruit flavor and true Pinot Noir color. Concomitant with the primary fermentation is malolactic fermentation (malic acid to lactic acid), which reduces the total acid and imparts softness to the wine. The grapes are pigeaged (foot treaded) 3 to 5 times daily to extract color and tannin. We then press the wine at 1 % sugar and allow it to complete fermentation in barrel; this helps integrate the qualities of oak in the wine. The wine was aged in 2 year old François Frères French oak barrels for 22 months and bottled unfined and unfiltered. The bottled 190 six pack cases of wine were further aged 14 months before release to allow complete integration and development.