By Cambria Winery
In simple terms, “racking” means transferring wine from one vessel to another.
A few weeks ago, our crew was busy gently racking the 2011 Julia’s Pinot Noir to get it ready for the blending phase in preparation of bottling.
Winemaker Denise Shurtleff snapped these pictures inside the cellar – and now you get a sneak peek!
It’s that time of year again: restaurants, bars and wineries across Santa Barbara are participating in Film Feast, a program in which participants create special menus, drinks offerings, and tasting flights to coincide with the Santa Barbara Internation Film Festival! From now until Sunday, February 5th, expect to see special restaurant and winery offerings when you dine or taste in and around Santa Barbara, including here at Cambria, where we are offering a special $10 tasting flight of seven of our small-production, hand-crafted single-clone wines.
If you aren’t yet familiar with our single-clone wines, you really ought to try them! Although it is hard to pick favorites, these really are my favorite of all the wines that we make at Cambria, and they are also very fun to try if you are interested in learning about how Pinot Noir and Chardonnay differ depending upon how much of each of the clones (or subvarietals) are in the wine. Tasting these Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays side by side is incredible, because the aroma and flavor and aroma profiles of each one are dramatically different - it will give you an even greater understanding what our winemaker looks for when blending all of them together to create our Julia’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, or Katherine’s Vineyard Chardonnay!
If you visit, please let me know what you think! I hope you love them as much as I do!
Due to rain here today and tomorrow, we have stopped harvesting Chardonnay right now, but we still have plenty to do in the winery! Last Friday we picked our blocks of Viognier in the Tepusquet Vineyard, and we are currently barrel-fermenting it.
In addition, all of our Pinot Noir lots finished fermentation, and our crew has been busy draining and pressing them for the last couple of days. After they finish pressing, the crew will get to work racking them into barrels. This will probably take them at least the next couple of weeks to finish.
Both the Viognier juice and the Pinot Noirs look fantastic so far! The Viognier has very nice acidity and lots of delicious flavor, along with beautiful citrus blossom and floral aroma characteristics, and the Pinot Noirs are showing very nice dark colors and lots of intense, deep flavors.
