St. Francis Zinfandel Old Vines

Vintage warm sunny days throughout the spring and summer months set the stage for a spectacular harvest in september 2014. The lack of rain meant that harvest began a little earlier than normal and was short in length finishing up by the end of october. The temperate days leading up to harvest produced good yields of high quality fruit with concentrated flavors complex aromatics and excellent structure. Vineyards the grapes in our sonoma county old vines zinfandel come from vineyards in dry creek valley sonoma valley russian river valley and alexander valley. These head-pruned and dry-farmed vines range in age from 55 to more than 100 years old producing low yields of fruit with highly concentrated intense flavors. Winemaking the grapes are gently de-stemmed and crushed before cold-soaking for three days to extract optimal color and flavor. The fruit is then inoculated with many different yeast strains to build complexity then fermented in separate lots using a combinatio