With the economy on a rollercoaster, we've had difficulty predicting how much wine to bottle. We had selected and blended the final cuvées for our
Estate Bottled Gewürztraminer and Anderson Valley Pinot Gris when we abruptly decided to bottle less of each. A few weeks later we noticed an increased demand on our website for Navarro's “value wines” and being unabashed marketers, we decided to use these excess wines and bottle a 2019
Cuvée Traditional Gewürztraminer. The main component, 55% of the cuvée, is the same wine as our 2019
Estate Bottled (Dry)—the part we had just cut back on. Another 20% of this bottling is from a cask of good, dry Gewürz wine that was not originally in our
Estate Bottled cuvée. The final 17% of this
Cuvée Traditional Gewürztraminer is Pinot Gris—the part of our
Anderson Valley Pinot Gris that we had decided not to bottle.
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Casey Hartlip and Jim Klein, Navarro's winemaker. Casey manages Valley Foothills Vineyard, our neighbor to the west. In the 1990s they planted a field of Gewürztraminer that is pruned, trellised and farmed to Navarro's specifications. Although we don't refer to this bottling as estate bottled, technically it could be.
Ulises about to enter an oak oval to scrub it down on the inside. ![[below]](/images/buttons/arrow_down.gif)
Navarro's Cuvée Traditional
Gewürztraminer is fermented and aged in these refrigerated French casks and the wine is a steal for only $14.75 a bottle in a full case.
The Gris addition reduced the alcohol a little and added a citrus element that made the cuvée a little more crisp and bright. Flavors of peach, lime and kumquat with sprinklings of nutmeg and honey tied up with a bright, mineral finish.
