93points
2020 Pommard Clone Estate Pinot Noir
Wine Score
93
This wine delivers more black cherries than other offerings, showing great purity of fruit but still revealing dried-herb and spice complexities. It's medium to full-bodied and expansive in the mouth, with a richness and solidness to it, yet there's an impressive degree of elegance and silk on the finish.
Joe Czerwinski, The Wine Advocate
Description
Bouchaine’s 100-acre estate vineyard lies on the southern border of Napa Valley’s Carneros district, overlooking the San Francisco bay with the financial district in the distance. Fog, wind, and the cold night time temperatures of this unique geographical area lend a distinctive regional identity to our Pinot Noir.
Growing Season
The 2020 growing season will certainly be remembered for years to come. As everyone huddled safely indoors to avoid the pandemic, our grapevines began their growing season by enjoying a dry, warm winter. The beautiful weather continued through Spring and Summer, with excellent ripening conditions allowing for an early harvest.
Vinification
All fruit is hand-harvested at night, preserving berry integrity. After a 7-day cold soak, fruit is fermented with native yeast in open top tanks. The wine is then drawn off and the must is placed into a basket press for gentle pressing. All wines complete malolactic fermentation in French oak barrels. The vineyard blocks are kept separate for evaluation with the most intriguing blocks racked together in late Spring to assemble the finest expression of the Pommard clones from our estate. The blend is returned to barrel to allow the wine to marry before bottling.