Dear Friends,
Welcome to Spring. The hills are green and the wildflowers are blooming, benefitting from a winter of good rainfall. Spring is special, with yellow, blue, and orange wildflowers heralding renewal of this vintage. The grapevines are awakened by the warm spring days, with new shoots emerging from their winter hibernation. The first shoots that sprout are on the eastern part of our vineyard, appropriately named Spring Hill.
Spring Hill has Chardonnay grapes and the new release showcases the 2020 Spring Hill Chardonnay and the 2020 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay. The NIRVANA 2021 is the premier Pinot in your package. For our members who receive only Pinots the package includes the 2020 and 2021 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir; for members who receive our reds a 2018 Merlot is in your shipment.
We tasted these wines and have detailed notes to share with you below. The common threads that run through are aroma, flavor, texture, and balance, woven together to create wines that leave a memorable impression on your palate. Each of the components is a result of choices we make in the vineyard, during fermentation and in the cellar. Aroma and flavor are greatly influenced by the terroir – the weather and soil at Nicholson Ranch – and fine-tuned by the date we harvest the grapes off the vine. Texture and balance are created by patient aging in oak barrels. What type of oak and how long the wine ages in the barrel determines how all the components are woven together.
All Nicholson Ranch wines are aged in French oak barrels for two years or three years. French oak trees used for barrels grow in specific forests in the center and east of France. The forests are owned by the government and historically the oak was used to build ships because of their water-tight quality. Today independent saw mills purchase whole logs that are cut into smaller staves. Coopers purchase staves from sawmills – each cooper sourcing the wood from a selection of forests, selecting the staves for the quality of the grain. The cooper ages the wood for two to three years to make the wood denser and water-tight. The barrels are crafted from staves held together with metal hoops. The signature element of each cooper is how they toast the barrels – how hot is the toasting fire and for how long each barrel is toasted. The forest, the grain, the toasting, all hand selected and crafted by the cooper, gives each barrel a distinctive quality.
The Spring Hill and the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay are fermented in a selection of French oak barrels and then aged for two years. The full-bodied creamy texture of the Chardonnays are a direct result of barrel fermentation and aging.
Barrel selection and aging distinguishes NIRVANA. NIRVANA is aged for three years in French oak barrels a year more than Cactus Hill. The extra year in the barrel makes NIRVANA concentrated and full-bodied, creating a distinctive wine.
Enjoy the wines in your wine club package. Thank you for being a Nicholson Ranch wine club member.
Deepak Gulrajani