• 2021 Gewürztraminer
    Cuvée Traditional
    Anderson Valley, Mendocino
    • (750 ml) Sold Out!
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Carbon sequestration Recent Press

All our best Gewürztraminer wines are produced from grapes grown on three quadrants of an 18-acre hill near the winery. After the original 1975 plantings slowly started to succumb to phylloxera in the 1990s, the East Hill was replanted in 2000 with phylloxera-resistant rootstock followed by the West Hill in 2005 and the North Hill in 2015.

Sheep in the pasture overlooking West Hill Gewürztraminer.
[above] Sheep in the pasture overlooking West Hill Gewürztraminer. Decades ago we began alternating rows in our vineyards by leaving one row in cover crops—to provide habitat for our insect friends—and incorporating shredded vineyard prunings into the soil with compost in the alternating row—to improve soil fertility and health. We didn't appreciate at the time that we were also sequestering carbon, a practice now being promoted in regenerative farming.
Some of the Gewürztraminer grapes were destemmed into a tank to allow the juice to extract aromatics from the skins. After a few hours, the juice was racked off and Alfredo shoveled the skins into a bin for pressing. [below]
Alfredo shoveling Gewürztraminer skins into a bin for pressing.


The phylloxera-resistant rootstocks are less vigorous than the robust, California-developed AXR1 rootstock, so vine density has increased from 726 to 1,452 vines/acre. The West and North Hills face the ocean breezes and typically produce our most aromatic wines whereas the warmer East Hill delivers richly flavored wines that are aromatically less floral. The fifth harvest from the recently replanted North Hill is the base wine for this bottling. The balance is from vines at our next-door neighbor's Valley Foothills Vineyard where the Ridge block was planted specifically for Navarro in the 1990s—the wine from this fruit can legally be labeled as estate bottled. The grapes from each picking were destemmed and pressed as separate lots and the juice was fermented then aged sur lie in French oak ovals for eight months. After a series of tastings, a cuvée was selected with 62% from the North Hill and 38% from the Ridge block. This wine is as dry as our flagship Gewürztraminer but it is a bit more fruit-forward with tangerine, lychee and ginger aromas and flavors. Gold Medal winner. Best of Class.

Specifications
  • Harvested: Sept. 13 to 16, 2021
  • Sugars at harvest: 23.8° Brix
  • Bottled: May 7, 2022
  • Cases produced: 777
  • Alcohol: 13.2%
  • Titratable acidity: 5.5 g/L
  • pH: 3.34