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Take the intense profundity of the 2007 Mink and combine it with the sheer elegance of the 2008 vintage from this vineyard, and you begin to understand the pleasing balance of the 2009. A powerful and generous nose opens with aromatics of blueberry, rich earth, and cassis interwoven with lilac and lavender, with notes of wild mushroom and cocoa. The palate is all dark fruits, brambly berries and black raspberry, spiced again with cocoa and cardamon. As usual, the acidity is bright and crisp, and the chalky fine tannins linger long and coat the palate with a distinctive minerality. With age, this wine will develop a broad, deep, and rich palate, balanced with bright and youthful fruit notes.
About the Vineyard...
The Mink Vineyard is located next door
to the winery, in an area known locally as Coombsville. Open to the same
morning fogs and afternoon breezes that cool Carneros to the west,
Coombsville is consistently one of the coolest pockets in Napa. Mink
sits on a level bench just leeward of a knoll that slows down the
prevailing maritime winds, allowing cooler air to settle, and making
Mink’s mesoclimate a couple degrees cooler, even, than the surrounding
hills. But the real secret to Mink’s explosive flavors, smooth,
mouth-coating minerality, comes from the soil. Underneath the top few
feet of alluvial clays and cobblestones (typical throughout the southern
reaches of Napa), is a layer of compressed volcanic ash, called tufa.
The tufa drains the top soils, storing moisture in rich clays
underneath. The vines are able, with some work, to grow roots into the
tufa layer, accessing moisture during the long, dry growing season. In a
typical year, Mink can be practically dry-farmed.
About the
Vintage...
The Mink Vineyard rebounded from the low yields of
2008 with a strong, healthy, and good-sized harvest in 2009. The season
started off with a couple of weeks of late rains that threatened to
harm the newly bloomed flowers and disrupt the fruit set. However, the
vines in the Mink Vineyard were spared damage and the rains instead
encouraged vigorous growth. The stronger than usual vine vigor combined
with a larger than average fruit set produced a balance in these vines
that allowed them to produce fruit with huge flavor and aroma, great
acidity, and the usual finish of chalky, mineral tannins that is the
signature of this vineyard.
About the Wine...
The grapes
were destemmed into small, one-ton, open-top fermenters, where we
employed a submerged cap device during the first half of fermentation.
This helps to extract the rich flavors and deep color that we expect
from this vineyard. We finished the fermentation with traditional hand
punch downs, and aged the wine in Billon cooperage, a barrel that tends
to sit subtly underneath the delicate fruit, lifting aromas without
crowding them. The wines were racked once, gently, prior to bottling.
Grapes, must, and wines were moved using gravity through to the barrel
and using inert gas through racking and bottling. 246 cases produced.
Tasting
Notes...
Take the intense profundity of the 2007 Mink and
combine it with the sheer elegance of the 2008 vintage from this
vineyard, and you begin to understand the pleasing balance of the 2009.
A powerful and generous nose opens with aromatics of blueberry, rich
earth, and cassis interwoven with lilac and lavender, with notes of wild
mushroom and cocoa. The palate is all dark fruits, brambly berries and
black raspberry, spiced again with cocoa and cardamon. As usual, the
acidity is bright and crisp, and the chalky fine tannins linger long and
coat the palate with a distinctive minerality. With age, this wine
will develop a broad, deep, and rich palate, balanced with bright and
youthful fruit notes.
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