Hendry Ranch Pinot Noir 2020
A Pinot grown right where the cool Carneros appellation gives way to the warmer reaches of greater Napa Valley.
Grape Varietals & Region: 100% Pinot Noir from Redwood Creek within the Hendry Vineyard, slightly west of the town of Napa, California, at an elevation between 200 and 220 feet on thin loam over a solid rock base. Morning fog and afternoon breezes from San Pablo Bay moderate the climate, giving long, warm summer days and cooler nights.
Taste Profile: Pale ruby in colour, with soft, perfumed red fruit and lightly spicy oak on the nose. Light-bodied, with sweet-sour red fruits like raspberry and cranberry, firm initial structure and moderately firm tannins balanced by bright acid.
Winemaking Process: Alcoholic fermentation was completed in approximately one week using only indigenous yeasts. At dryness, the wine was pressed and put into barrels for malolactic fermentation, followed by eleven months of ageing in French oak barrels, 50% of which were new.
Winemaker: The Hendry family has farmed this Napa benchland since 1939, when George and Margaret Hendry bought the old Sigrist property, a section of which still carried Zinfandel vines dating to 1900. George, an agronomy professor, died in 1944, leaving Margaret to run the ranch alone, raising sons George O. and Andrew while farming grapes, prune-plums, walnuts and cattle. Their son George O. Hendry began estate-bottling the family’s own wine in 1992 and expanded the property in 1994; today his nephew, Mike Hendry, oversees vineyard management, continuing more than eight decades of family stewardship over the same benchland west of Napa.
