Estate - Los Olivos District AVA

These vines were planted in 1973, part of the second planting at Ibarra-Young Vineyard. They are own rooted, no till, rotationally grazed, and interplanted with native plants to the Santa Ynez watershed. This block sits across a fairly sandy part of an alluvial bench that runs through the vineyard. It has extremely low vigor so its clusters are constantly dappled with the California sunshine. Imagine this while you’re tasting! In 2020, this block only yielded about 0.75 tons to the acre. We’ve been working hard on rebuilding soil health in this section and are just now beginning to see the impacts of our rotational grazing and no-till practices.

This wine was picked around 20B just as the acids were starting to drop from the heat spikes. I gently crushed the grapes with my feet before pressing. This year, the wine was fermented with its native yeasts in a combination of stainless steel drums and neutral French oak. It was aged in these same vessels. This wine doesn’t ever seem to want to finish malolactic fermentation. After 8 months of elevage in stainless and neutral oak barrels, the wine was gravity racked to a stainless steel tank to melange all together. The wine was racked one more time for clarity and bottled unfined and unfiltered in mid-July on a fruit moon.

Flinty and precise nose with a warm and welcoming palate. This wine likes cold oysters at golden hour at your favorite tranquil spot. This wine is great now, great the next day, and will age for many years. Drinks fresh!