Mendocino Benchlands 2020

Serious farming can still lead to light, bright and playful wine! Inspired by the Italian farming tradition of growing grapes on the poorer soils of Mendocino’s uplifted benchlands.

The Mendocino Benchlands blend was resurrected in 2019 (original vintage was 2015) as a result of a new vineyard we started leasing and farming in 2019 in Mendocino County called Chiarito-Ling. Deviating from the 2015 and 2019 vintages a smidge, in 2020 we also added some juicy carbonic Petite Sirah from both of our self-farmed vineyards to bring some blue fruit to the blend. This wine is inspired by the Italian farming tradition where grapes were planted on the poorer soils of the uplifted benchlands of Mendocino County (the rich valley floor soils were reserved for vegetables). All of the vineyards in this blend are planted on those uplifted benchlands.

All four components of this early season Zin, Petite Sirah and mid-season Nero d’Avola blend were fermented separately in small batches. Zinfandel was harvested first and ~20% of clusters were food tread (on stems) and put into an open top stainless steel fermenter with the remaining ~80% intact whole clusters. Minimal pumpovers were performed and this lot was pressed after a few days, when the color was still that of ruby red grapefruit juice. Petite Sirah from Benson Ranch and Charito-Ling were fermented similarly to one another: ~40% was foot tread (on stems) and put with the remaining ~60% intact whole clusters into sealed stainless steel tanks to undergo partial carbonic macerations for ~4 days prior to pressing. Nero d’Avola was destemmed and pressed after 5 days. All lots were racked off lees and barreled down into neutral oak at dryness where they aged for 6 months prior to blending and bottling.

Production: 738 cases