DeChaunac Finger Lakes

Description :

The Patrician Verona Vineyard is located on the western shore of Cayuga Lake and has been a grape farm for three generations. The land is gently sloping towards the lake and sits at 570ft above sea level on Cazenovia silt loam soils. These vines were planted in 1973, own rooted without grafting.
After harvesting the red DeChaunac grapes, winemaker Ben Riccardi did a three-day cold soak to extract the color from the skins, then pressed the red juice off and added it to Chardonnay skins that were already pressed out to make a separate Chardonnay wine. Ben fermented the red juice on white skins, in order to get finer tannins from the Chardonnay skins instead of from the DeChaunac grape skins. Fermentation was un-inoculated and occurred naturally on the Chardonnay must. Must was pressed before dryness, using a basket press. The wine was left to age in tank and underwent a natural malolactic fermentation. Racked several times before bottling, the wine is unfiltered. 253 cases produced.