This wine is made from grapes grown at John Balletto's Occidental Road Vineyard, located about a mile north-east of the town of Sebastopol. The vineyard's location, in the southern-most third of the Russian River Valley where the weather is much cooler than areas to the north, provides an extended period of ripening for Chardonnay.
Charlatan is the very finest Pinot Noir we make. In 2012, it represented less than five percent of our total production, and was crafted as a selection of our best barrels of Pinot Noir.
John Balletto has been a family friend for a number of years and we are fortunate to work with fruit from his family's vineyards. This wine is produced from the Burnside Road Vineyard, located at just under 1,000 feet of elevation and about 10 miles from the Pacific Ocean. This unique micro-climate provides one of the rare places where Pinot Noir can ripen slowly to produce wines of depth and distinction.
Wonderfully rich and complex, with layers of pear, apple, citrus and melon flavors that are long and intense on the finish.
This wine was made using native yeasts and malolactic bacteria. The fermentation was long and slow with the two lots finishing the secondary fermentation in April of 2017. The blended wine was dry, stable and bottled without fining or filtration.
A powerful, expressive wine, with a core of citrus fruit. The initial nose is restrained, offering muted notes of lemon blossoms and wet stone. On the palate the wine is bright, showing primary flavors of ripe citrus, casaba melon and lemon curd. The finish is well balanced and persistent with a long, mouthwatering finish.
The initial nose is full and fruit driven, offering up ripe notes of rich red cherry, wild strawberry and toasted oak. On the palate, the wine is big and fills the mouth, dominated by ripe Bing cherries accentuated with notes of cola and vanilla. As the wine opens, it begins to show added complexity, offering up nuances of rose petals, mushroom and forest floor. The finish is long with lingering candied cherry and cola, giving way to a refined, well integrated tannic structure and mouth-watering end.
