Matthiasson Napa Valley White blend 2022
STORY
This wine is our conception of a mythical ideal, our attempt to create the archetypal "white wine", and get at the core of what great white wine is all about - thus the name. An intentional blend of four grape varieties from two vineyards, it is a California wine with a spiritual connection to Friuli, Italy, but also draws inspiration from the Loire, Burgundy, Graves, Alsace, the Rhone, old-school Napa and Sonoma. The list of wines we are inspired by goes on and on, and they are all wrapped up in this bottle.
FARMING & WINEMAKING
The two vineyards are both in the cool and foggy southern part of the Napa Valley.
The Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon come from Ryan’s Vineyard, which sits on a streak of alluvial gravel in the center of the valley floor, in the south part of Napa. It is right in the path of the daily wind current that pulls up through the valley from the San Francisco Bay towards Calistoga. Native grasses are planted under the vines to compete for moisture and nutrients and encourage the roots to forage down deep in the gravelly soil.
The Ribolla Gialla and Tocai Friulano are from the tiny Bengier Vineyard (formerly Vare), in the mouth of Napa’s Dry Creek canyon, right next to the creek. The rocky fluvial soil and cool air drainage of the canyon works perfectly with these varieties. Ribolla Gialla is an extremely old variety cultivated since medieval times in the Collio region of Italy and Slovenia.
The fruit was very lightly whole-cluster-pressed. All four varieties were blended immediately upon dryness, racked, and returned onto the lees for aging until bottling. We used 15% new Boutes barrels, with no stirring. To preserve all the acidity the wine was prevented from going through malo-lactic fermentation. After ten months of barrel aging, the wine was filtered to prevent malolactic fermentation in bottle, and then bottled. Intended to age, the White Wine is held in bottle for at least a year before release but will reward much longer aging. The first vintage of this blend, back in 2005, is still going strong.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The blend is 46% Semillon, 29% Ribolla Gialla, 23% Sauvignon Blanc, and 2% Tocai Friulano.
The pH is 3.40, TA is 6.5, and the alcohol is 12.0%. 1143 cases produced.