2023 Green & Red Zinfandel

Nose of blueberry, orange zest, tobacco leaf and garrigue. Full-bodied yet balanced with elegant acidity and notes of boysenberry, raspberry and dark chocolate. SR (12/24)

Months of winter rain and freezing temperatures delayed flowering. The cool summer pushed harvest back to October. Planted in red chert and greenstone gravel soils at 1800 feet in elevation, the Northeast facing Tip Top vineyard was ready first. Chiles Mill, at 1000 feet with Northwest exposure, took twelve days longer to ripen. Approachable now, this classic Napa Valley zinfandel will continue to develop over the next six years. SR (11/24)

In 1968, founder Jay Heminway was living in Berkeley, teaching sculpture at U.C. Berkeley. Jay purchased the property in the hills of the Vaca Mountain range in 1969. Inspired by the remains of century-old vines on the property, soon Jay was planting gorgeous zinfandel and other varieties at his vineyard, now named Green & Red after the oceanic red chert-based soils and veins of green serpentine running through the property. First planted was the Chiles Mill Vineyard, situated at 800-1000 feet above sea level and named after the historic Chiles Grist Mill — the first flour mill in Northern California, which had been built by Joseph B. Chiles in 1845. Finally, Jay reached high up into the sky and planted Tip Top Vineyard, sitting at 1800-2000ft, at the very top of this mountainside property, with views all around, out into central Napa Valley and up to Saint Helena in the west, with Chiles Valley extending into the distance below in the east.

Rainfall: 64 inches (above average)
Bloom: End of June
Weather: Late and prolonged harvest due to consistently cool weather throughout the growing season.

Harvest Dates: 6 – 18 October
Grapes: Average Brix 24.2˚
TA: 6.3 g/L
pH: 3.76
Fermentation: 100% crushed and fermented in stainless steel tank with two pumpovers daily, natural primary and secondary.
Barrels: 100% air-dried American oak barrels (15% new, 30% one year old, and 55% five-plus years old).
Aging: Fourteen months in barrel

Sustainably farmed, hand-harvested, grapes; whole-cluster pressed; fermented on the native yeasts, followed by a full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria; minimum effective sulfur for this wine (35 ppm at crush, 124 ppm over the course of aging); pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.