Roco Wine - Wits' End Vineyard - Chehalem Mountains - Pinot Noir2013

RED WINE

Tasting notes

Rich aromas of blueberry preserves and 'pinot' earth spice with a lovely balance of tart blackberry, cooked cranberry and wet gravel on the palate. This is a particularly refreshing wine, begging one to drink more and more. - Rollin Soles

Vintage 2013

We experienced quite a bit of sunshine in the spring but the weather became cool and wet in mid June making it difficult to determine when the midpoint of bloom occurred. We had the fruit set the 3rd week of June which led a late October harvest. The rest of summer just about record dry with a normal shot of rain in early September that helped dry vines go through Veraison. September 21st, the tables turned as wet monsoon-like conditions lasted until the 27th. The Willamette Valley received record rainfall during that period of time. ROCO brought in fruit for our white and sparkling wines prior to the 22nd and the majority of our red fruit in by the 27th. The fruit came in with surprising cleanliness due to our non-complacent farming methods. We also kept the canopies especially open in fall, pulling leaves by hand and cane positioning. These are the kind of wines I came up here to make.

Winemaking

ROCO Pinot Noir is hand picked and then chilled overnight to 38°F in our large cold room. The chilled bunches are gently de-stalked and the whole berries fall into small 1.6 ton open fermenters. The berries soak for about five days before beginning ferment with our proprietary, house-cultured indigenous wine yeast. Soaking allows gentle extraction of color and flavor from the berry skin, and not the bitter-tasting seeds. The fermentations are hand punched twice a day to mix skins and fermenting juices. Ferments are allowed to reach about 28°C. A post-fermentation soak occurs until the wine is just right for removing from the skins and seeds. At that time the ferment is gently pressed in our large tank press. The young wine is sent to barrel for Malo-lactic fermentation to soften the acidity and to add further complexity, then racked once to a mix of new and three-year-old, tight-grained, French oak barrels. The wines are aged in barrel for 18 or more months before bottling.