The Vinisterra Estate:
- The wines of Vinisterra are imbued with the spirit of intention from man, but the front-and-center show is the land and the vines and, of course, their fruit. Top to bottom, the wines in their line up are fastidiously made and completely oriented towards pure representation of place.
- All grapes are estate grown in two vineyard sites: one adjacent to their winery in the ejido of San Antonio de las Minas in Valle de Guadalupe and the other in the Valle de San Vicente further south. Both vineyards are organically farmed.
- Christoph, a winemaker who is constantly trying to peel back the layers of himself from the wines in an effort to let the character of the soil, sun, and plants speak more clearly, made the bold decision to not have any of the large granite boulders, (common in the area) removed from the vineyard when he first planted it. Some of the boulders on site are twice the size of cars, and, in addition to making the vineyard impossible to manage with any mechanized devices, creates a complexity of micro climates that results in the need to make many passes during harvest.
Total production: 22.5 acres under vine, 8 wines, 4,000 cases
2016 Nebbiolo (MAGNUM) - Vinisterra
Tasting Notes and Drinking Window:
Those who know Nebbiolo from Mexico’s Northern Baja viticultural region won’t be surprised by the broodingly dark and rich color of this wine, nor will they bat and eye at its fragrant nose of blueberries, tart plum, cigar box and baking spices. What will grip them is that for all of this magnitude of color and aroma the wine delivers a structure on the pallet that carries its remarkably full-body across it as if it had almost no weight at all. An exploration of finesse at amplitude this wine hits the target for how Nebbiolo can optimally be expressed in the region.
220 cases made
Drinking window: Upon release - 12 to 15 years
Vintage:
2016
Blend:
100% Tempranillo
Producer:
Vinisterra
Winemaker:
Christoph Gartner - Swiss born, now a Mexican citizen
Vineyards:
Valle de Santo Tomas - Estate vinyards, 900 ft elevation, 12 year old vines planted in minerally rich sandy soils.
Winemaking:
Grapes were picked by hand at night to preserve freshness and acidity in mid-August. Clusters were destemmed and final sorted by hand, pressed and fermented in stainless steel tanks for 12 days. Once fermentation is complete, the wine was racked into neutral French Oak barrels and aged for a full 24 months before bottling and held in the bottle for 12 months before release.
Sulfites: 30 ppm
Farming:
organic, sustainable
Alcohol:
15.3%
