Tasting Notes
Currant, sweet strawberry, a touch of vanilla, fresh cherry, with savory and meaty notes.
About Sean McBride Winery
My wines are made by hand, start to finish. I pick our vineyards by hand, at dawn, when the vineyards are still cool — the mist and the stillness of the air broken only by the sound of occasional birdsong. This is the hard work of the season: we work quickly, diligently, to bring in the year’s harvest. The clusters of grapes make a soft THUMP as they are cut by grape knives and fall thoughtfully from the vine into the waiting bin.
Back at the winery, we sort and destem our fruit gently. Each vineyard will produce at least one single vineyard cuvee, but most vineyards will produce at least two different wines. We process some lots into stainless steel tanks or concrete, others will ferment in oak. Some lots will initiate fermentation spontaneously, without any additives or treatments. Other lots come along more patiently. No two wines are ever alike; no two ever receive the same treatment.
We have no recipes. We have no strict rules. But we generally add nothing to the grape must, preferring instead to allow the native yeast living on the grape skins to develop and evolve a native fermentation. This process can take days or weeks; it is patient, quiet work. This is our commitment to essential winemaking practices only: We eschew the use of additives of any kind, allowing the vintage, the vineyard, and the technique to speak for itself. When we must add something, we do so sparingly, begrudgingly, and with great care. Each wine is distinct.
At the completion of fermentation, we gently press the wines off the solids and rack the young wines into barrels. From this point on, the wines will age gracefully until the next year. Some wines will age in new French oak barrels, others in older barrels; some will age in stainless steel, others in concrete. Every wine is different. Towards the end of summer in the following year, we rack and assemble the wines in stainless steel tanks prior to bottling with neither fining nor filtration. We bottle each wine individually by hand at the winery.
Then, towards the end of August, we begin again to prepare for harvest, and the new vintage begins.
Kim Giles Vineyard
Kim’s vineyard overlooking San Pablo Bay is located southeast of Carneros on the road leading down to American Canyon, sort of in a no-man’s land between the better known parts of Napa Valley, just a mile down the road from our winery in the Crusher District. Kim farms the vineyard personally, and keeps bees on the property. We picked this vineyard by hand and partially destemmed the fruit to open top barrels for native primary fermentation. We pressed entirely by hand, and racked to one new French barrel and two neutral barrels for a natural malolactic fermentation. The wine aged for twelve months in barrel prior to racking to steel. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. Three barrels; 74 cases produced.
