Tasting Notes
The MYTHICAL 2022 vintage continues the legacy of this Cabernet Sauvignon, sourced from Aaron Pott’s favorite Napa vineyards. Pleasurable now in its youth, this wine will benefit from cellaring – its depth and complexity will unfold over time, promising rich layers of flavor and intrigue with every bottle.
About Peliss Winery
The essence of our Calistoga landscape is expressed in The Ravens Vineyard – a 2.6 acre volcanic knoll, surrounded by forest. The streaming coastal wind & fog, the radiant days and dark, chilly nights, the spectrum of volcanic soil, from tuff to obsidian, combine to yield fruit of complex nature and alluring balance.
The Ravens Vineyard, Calistoga AVA, is set on our family property at the northern-most end of Napa Valley, where the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges converge. Mount St. Helena looms behind the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, planted on a knoll surrounded by forest of oaks, manzanita and madrone. Red-tailed Hawks, Turkey Vultures, and Ravens circle in the warm air currents above the property.
Vineyard rows mount a slope comprised of volcanic, rocky and loamy soil with excellent drainage. Calistoga’s temperature shifts are the most extreme in Napa: 24-hour temperatures can range over forty degrees, as cool nights and foggy mornings are followed by dry, sunny days. The vineyard’s natural orientation allows for even fruit ripening throughout the growing season and shaded projection when the sun is at its most intense. Cooling breezes and fog from the Sonoma Coast stream into the property through the Chalk Hill Gap.
Low-vigor rootstock was planted in 2008 with the See clone grafted the following year. The closely-planted Cabernet Sauvignon vines are organically farmed and cane-pruned. Birds, bats, and ladybugs help keep the vineyard pest-free.
Perliss wines are aged in both terracotta amphorae and oak barrels. These two materials allow for different expressions from the fruit, which are then blended in their most advantageous proportions.
When Altelier Centre France, one of our cooperages (whose lifeblood is French oak), proposed being the first in Napa to work with amphorae from Manetti Gusmano, we were intrigued – primarily by the possibility of experiencing wine from our vineyard without any oak shading, but also by the opportunity to make wine as it had been for thousands of years, before the advent of barrels.
Manetti Gusmano & Figli is a Tuscan manufacturer of terracotta products for eight generations (with the credentials of making roof tiles for Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence). The clay itself is sourced from an Etruscan quarry. Each vessel is handmade by only two artisans in a process that lasts months. More porous than wood or concrete, the amphorae allow for a deep concentration of the wine, while maintaining a beautiful freshness.
Clay also imparts a tannic structure different than oak, and an enhanced minerality. And just as oak from different forests has their particularities, so does clay composition vary depending on where it is sourced. The galestro clay used by Manetti Gusmano is renowned for its strength. Wines created in clay have a purity and brightness unachievable with oak. Their remarkably vivid character seems to vibrate in the glass.
BARRELS – Although less porous than clay, oak staves allow wine to breathe and concentrate; they lend tannins that are key in the structure of a wine; they also add many flavor components – so much so that the same wine aged in separate barrels becomes two different wines. The cooperages one chooses to work with greatly impacts what is finally bottled; the range of barrels is sometimes referred to as the winemaker’s spice box.
