2010 Zinfandel Heart Arrow Ranch

History
The Heart Arrow vineyard is a completely self-contained farm: they raise vegetables, grapes, sheep and cows, and fertilize the crops with manure from the farm. They use no herbicides or pesticides in the vineyard at all, preferring to use cover crops and soil amendments that help sustain and protect the vines. The vineyard management techniques foster a distinctive character—the site-specific terroir of the vineyard—that make the wine unique in aroma, flavor, and structure from our other Zinfandels made at Dashe Cellars.

Because of the way the grapes are grown, and because of the techniques we use to make this wine—fermented with the native yeasts on the grapes; aged in older French oak barrels; unfined and unfiltered; and bottled with low SO2 levels—we felt that it deserved to be labeled with our other wines in the Les Enfants Terribles (the “Wild Children”) series, which are made in a more Old World style.  


Production
We picked these grapes in late September, after a relatively cool ripening season and a two-day blast of heat just before harvest.  Unfortunately, the vines were affected by the heat and we lost a substantial amount of the vineyard, but the remaining grapes were dark and intense in flavors. As with all of our wines, the fermentation was conducted using the native yeasts found naturally growing on the grapes, which helps with maintaining a unique and distinctive vineyard character.   The fermentation started slowly, and then picked up speed and heat, as is typical with native yeast fermentations.

At dryness, we gently pressed the must and racked the wine to older “neutral” French oak barrels. By using older barrels we intentionally kept this wine away from heavy oak influences, and enhanced the fruit character of the wine.

The 2010 vintage produced a wine that is much darker in color and intense in body than our previous vintage—this wine will last for many years in the cellar. With its beautiful aromas—reminiscent of the great grand cru wines of Beaujolais—it is one of the most immediately pleasing wines in its youth that we’ve made.  It also has the ability to age, due to the relatively substantial tannins in the wine.  Given time, this wine is sure to please; it goes well with a wide variety of foods from delicate poultry dishes to substantial grilled meats or stews.