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Claiborne & Churchill 2014 Fall Wine Tasting Notes Video: 2012 Estate Dry Riesling, 2013 Pinot Blanc,
2012 “Classic” Pinot Noir, 2012 Malbec

Thursday, September 25th

Tasting Notes:

2012 Estate Dry Riesling: 2012 marked the fourth official harvest of our SIP (Sustainability in Practice) Certified Estate Riesling vineyard. And what a great vintage it turned out to be! Rather than releasing this soon after bottling (as we do with our Central Coast Dry Riesling)…Continue reading here.

2013 Pinot Blanc: Speaking of SIP, we are happy to source sustainably grown Pinot Blanc from our neighbors down at Laetitia Vineyards. This rich and mouth-filling wine delivers intense jasmine, peach, and citrus aromas while offering flavors of melon, toasted almond, and spice. Continue reading here.

2012 “Classic” Pinot Noir: Since the late 1980’s our “Classic” Pinot Noir has been a staple of Claiborne & Churchill. It has always been made to showcase the elegance and complexities of Pinot Noir from the Edna Valley. Continue reading here.

2012 Malbec: Malbec is back! It’s been over 3 years since we last released our Malbec, and we couldn’t be more excited to have it back in our line-up. Continue reading here.

Claiborne & Churchill Harvest 2014 Update

Thursday, September 11th

It’s early September and harvest is in full swing here in the Edna Valley. Because of the warm and dry winter and the early onset of bud break, we’ve been ahead of schedule all season! In fact, a small lot of Pinot Noir was the first to be harvested, making it the first vintage in twelve years we’ve processed red grapes before any of our white varietals. With that said, we still have about 85% of our Pinot Noir to bring in from the Twin Creeks vineyards this Friday! This will account for a good majority of our wine. (No doubt it comes as a surprise to many that Pinot Noir is our largest production wine with five different bottlings awaiting release for 2015.)

This 2014 harvest also marks the sixth official vintage of our “Claiborne Vineyard” Estate Riesling. At 4:30 am yesterday the crew started picking our 2 acre vineyard, which yielded a total of 5.8 tons. Though this wine might not be released until 2016, our 2012 Estate Riesling will be available later this month. We were privileged to have our friends in Fialta (@fialtamusic) use our Estate Riesling vineyard as a backdrop for footage in their new music video.  They were here at 5 am as the action was happening and crews were busy picking. Stay tuned for yet another great song and music video by one of our favorite local bands!

We now have 90% of our Riesling in and it’s only the second week of September! This is in contrast to last year, where we did not start picking until early October – just another reminder of this year’s early harvest. Heck, we might even wrap up harvest by the end of the month!

As we continue with our traditional winemaking practices, our winemaker Coby has also decided to implement whole cluster fermentation on small lots of our Pinot Noir and Syrah the last couple years. Happy with the results, he’s decided to whole-cluster ferment a larger percentage of this year’s fruit. The goal with whole cluster fermentation is enhanced aromatic expression, greater complexity and silkier smooth tannins. We look forward to the progression of these wines over the coming year.