2023 Santa Barbara County Viognier - Phi

Soil. Vines. Wines.  This is the order in which great wine is made.  Ampelos is the Greek word for vine.  The  Greek symbol Phi: “the golden” reveals the golden and silky fruit characterics of this wine.   Classics don't come often but we have found one in our beautiful golden viognier.   

The relationship we cultivate with our land is paramount in producing hand crafted, minimally invasive wines that both whisper and shout about the terroir from which they are grown.   Our commitment to natural winemaking is evident in every sip.

Wine Making Style:

• The wine making goal for the Viognier is to retain the flavors of the freshly picked fruit and not to mask it with oak or other distracting components
• We cold fermented it at about 50 degrees for about a month to ensure that the fruit flavors do not  burn off
• The primary fermentation utilizes the natural wild yeast that comes in on the grapes
• The wine does not go through the second (malolactic) fermentation – that way we keep the minerality as well as the crispness of the fruit in the wine
• To reduce our energy use, we have replaced the electricity hungry traditional cold stabilization with a new product based on manoproteins – the results are amazing and we feel even more “green” by doing so.
• The wine was sterile filtered before bottling.