This dessert wine has elegant stawberry, nectarine, and orange blossom aromas, and a lucious mouthfeel. The 2004 Deglac? would be perfect with any semi-sweet fruit dessert, from fresh seasonal berries to fruit sorbets, poached pears or apple tarts. Available in 375ml bottles.
Detailed Info, Previous Vintage Notes, Reviews:
From the winery:
BACKGROUND The origins of this wine can be traced to the 2nd year of the International Pinot Noir Celebration in July
1988. Josef Becker was doling out tiny amounts of his 1976 Sp?tburgunder Trockenbeerenauslese, which Michael Adelsheim
was lucky enough to taste. Since it had always bothered Michael that we didn't have a wine to serve at the end of our winery
dinners, he dreamed we could produce our own version, by freezing the grapes after picking to produce a faux Ice Wine.
Finally, in 2001, with an unexpected crop on some grafted Pinot noir vines, we made an experimental batch of such a wine. It
was delicious. And so, we've continued.
GROWING SEASON What a crazy year! A stretch of warm weather in February jump-started the vines, so bud break
occurred on March 29th, much earlier than usual. A combination of factors - a touch of frost, a tiny critter that caused "short
shoot syndrome", and bad weather at bloom - took care of crop thinning for the year with no human intervention necessary.
June, July, and much of August were incredibly hot, so we were not totally displeased by our heaviest August rain storm in a
couple decades. Sure crop size was lowered even more by some split berries caused by the storm, but it - and some lighter rain
events that followed - slowed things down enough so that when a nice stretch of dry weather lingered starting from mid-
September, the flavors were able to mature coolly and fully.
VINEYARDS All grapes for this wine were grown at our Ribbon Springs and Bryan Creek Vineyards. We chose the
warmest sections of these sites to ensure the ripest possible grapes. The 5.58 tons of Pinot noir grapes destined for this wine
averaged 27? Brix at harvest.
WINEMAKING After the grapes were picked, they were quickly trucked to a cold-storage facility and frozen. In late
October they were brought back to the winery and allowed to partially thaw (so we could actually "press" them). The bag press
was used to gently separate the juice from both the skins and the ice. This increased the sugar concentration in the pressed
juice; At 37? Brix we had the potential for quite a sweet wine. Cultured yeast was used for an especially cold fermentation,
which lasted six weeks, and then the temperature was dropped even lower to put an end to yeast activity. The wine was bottled
in April, with a final residual sugar level of 17%.
