The 2010 vintage was our second year of producing Gewurztraminer and, honestly, it was a
year of lessons learned.
Last year we wrote that, "Our goal in making a Gewurztraminer was to make an honestly,
truly, painfully, dry rendition of the grape. It seems that many Gewurzs these days are dryish,
but not dry but the standards we use to measure other grapes. We chose not to follow
this path but rather ferment the wine to complete dryness." Our goal in 2010 was the same,
but the wine refused to finish fermenting. We restarted the fermentation a few times, and
yet it never truly started back up again, leaving us with a wine that was slightly sweet. After
some investigation, it appeared that the cause for the stuck ferment was, in fact, the very
acidity that we so value, from the extraordinarily cool 2010 vintage. The pH on this wine is
actually 3.1ph... so it is incredibly acidic.
Ultimately, we decided that (while we could have de-acidified the wine) the best course of
action was to let the wine be what it wanted to be, reflective of both the place and the vintage.
The wine shows wonderful spicy pineappple, fig, and mineral notes. The wine shows
its fruit, but this is balanced by the crispness from its bracing acidity.
