2020 Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir - Rho (barrel select)

Soil. Vines. Wines.  This is the order in which great wine is made.  Ampelos is the Greek word for vine.  The  Greek symbol Rho: “the correlation” is used mathematically as a correlation coefficient.  This wine is the correlation between the best barrels in our winery, longer barrel aging and additional new oak. 

 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 Ampelos Vineyard in Sta. Rita Hills is the first in the US to be certified sustainable, organic and biodynamic.  Our commitment to natural farming and winemaking is evident in every sip.

Wine Making Style:

• After we harvested the fruit, it stayed 24 hours in our cold room to avoid the use of dry ice
• The fruit was gently destemmed and cold soaked for 3-5 days until the fermentation started.  based on the trials we had done since 2009 we decided this year for the first time not to add any yeast but let the wild yeast the grapes carries from the vineyard do its job
• We hand punched each fermenter twice a day to enhance the extraction of colors, tannins and flavors
• After completed primary fermentation we let the fermenters continue with extended maceration up to one month
• We separated the free run, press off the rest and barrel down the individual batches
• Then the second fermentation (converts malolatic acid to lactic acid) kicks in utilizing the natural wild malolactic bacteria 
• After one year of barrel ageing we tasted through all barrels and selected our favorite 9 barrels
• Composition is 22% clone 115, 22% 2a, 22% 667, 11% pommard4, 11% 828 and 11% 777
• This wine is made entirely from free run wine – no press wine barrels were selected
• It was aged for 33 months and only racked once and it is unfined and unfiltered