2005 Chris Lee Pinot noir -- Tandem Winery Shopping Cart
$60.00
Just over two acres in a lava ash field were planted by Chris and Chris Lee, a husband and wife team with
the goal of producing either stellar Pinot noir, or nothing at all. Greg L had seen the vineyard a couple of
years before and, after having made some vine husbandry suggestions, took the challenge in 2005 to coax
just a little less than 200 cases from this unique and viticultural-isolated site. Our friend Steve Yafa took
a special hand in guiding this wine, overseeing the late vineyard watch, the picking and the fermentation.
A portion of this wine also went into his own Segue label.
Vineyard:
Many of the vines in this vineyard are extremely low-vigor, trying to grow in the volcanic ash
in the trough between Sonoma and Bennet mountains. The challenge here is to coax any crop at all from
the white, chalk-like soil. Shoots don’t even grow up to the second trellis wire, and berries are the size of
currants, with plenty of sunlight and air moving through the very open, tiny clusters that do appear. The
Chris Lee vineyard sits alone in wildly-undulating terrain that exists in a small valley actually above and
to the North of the Sonoma Valley, in a narrow vale created by the shoulders of the mountains bearing
their famous AVA (American Viticultural Appellation) names. We’re pretty sure no one else will be
planting nearby, at least any time soon, ensuring that the work the Lees have done will remain unique, and
the wine enigmatic in California’s Pinot noir profile.
We hope you will enjoy this special, terroir-driven wine which is borne of volcanic soil, celebrated in its
tending by friends and family and created as a true “tandem” effort between the land and our hands.
Technical Data:
- Harvest: Picked at optimum sugar, acid and tannin ripeness (24.2 Brix, 8.9 g/L acid, rich/dark texture)
on September 29, the tiny berries and clusters were only partially destemmed (approximately 12.5%
whole cluster), with no crushing. Yield was under 2 tons/acre, with much of the weight going to
stems and skins due to the fantastic skin-to-juice ratio. The must (juice and skins) was transferred by
gravity to a 4-ton open-top dairy tank, which also has the ability to gently extract flavor with a great
surface-to-volume ratio. Hand-plunging was gently applied to this, as all Tandem Pinot noir vats.
- Fermentation: Primary fermentation was a difficult start, with 11 days of cold soak before the native
yeast, or more probably due to the length of time, winery-indigenous yeast took off. Primary was
cool and slow, but completed dryness shortly after pressing off at around 0.5 Brix (% sugar).
Secondary fermentation finished quickly and un-inoculated also, within a month of primary’s
completion.
- Barrel aging: We used only 12.5% new French oak in the aging of this wine for 11 months in small,
228 L barriques. The selected forests were mostly from Troncias and Allier coopered by Remond and
Francois Freres, the majority of which were once- and twice used for Chardonnay fermentation.
- Final bottling technical information of 211 cases of this unfined and unfiltered Pinot noir:
- pH: 3.52
- TA: 6.7 g/L
- 14.9% alcohol
- Residual sugar: 0.12% (very, very dry)
- Appellation: Sonoma Valley
SKU: T705PNCL
Other products in the category Current Releases:
2007 Ferrington Vineyard Gewurztraminer
2007 Manchester Ridge Vineyard Pinot noir
2005 Porter-Bass Chardonnay
2006 Lorenzo Chardonnay
2006 Manchester Ridge Chardonnay
2006 Sangiacomo Chardonnay
2005 Kent Ritchie Chardonnay
2006 Kent Ritchie Chardonnay -- SILVER MEDAL - 2009 San Francisco International Wine Competition
2006 Porter-Bass Chardonnay -- NEW RELEASE!
2004 Porter-Bass Chardonnay
2005 Lorenzo Chardonnay
2005 Aldine Zinfandel
2006 Van der Kamp Pinot Noir
2007 Hawk’s Roost Ranch Pinot noir
2007 Van der Kamp Pinot Meunier
2006 Auction Block Pinot noir -- SILVER MEDAL - 2009 SF Int'l Wine Competition & 92 POINTS-Wine News
2006 Sangiacomo Pinot Noir -- GOLD MEDAL - 2009 SF Int'l Wine Competition & 93 POINTS-Wine News
2006 Silver Pines Pinot Noir -- 93 POINTS - Wine News (August Edition 2009)
2006 Van der Kamp Pinot Meunier
2007 Auction Block Pinot Noir
2007 Van der Kamp Pinot Noir -- NEW RELEASE!
2006 Peloton Red Wine
2004 Aldine Zinfandel
Tandem Winery Products
Tandem Winery
Tandem Winery ecommerce software powered by Nexternal