Note: This wine is unfined and unfiltered meaning you will find some awesome sediment in it. Embrace it.

We’re going au naturel for the very first time.

Harnessing the power of Carbonic Maceration, we created a bright natural red wine for you to savor through the Autumnal Equinox.

After scoring Cinsault from the highly-elevated and highly-acclaimed Snows Crossing Vineyard in El Dorado, California our winemaking team felt inspired to capture the fresh, fruitful characteristics of the grapes and decided to ferment them via Carbonic Maceration. This process of natural winemaking can be weird and geeky, so if you want to indulge, we got you down below.

Our label for this unique limited-production wine features a photograph of the top of a hand-painted female mannequin from the 1960s. A cool thrift store find, we became captivated by the personality of this vintage piece. With a brightly-painted face, pink lips, and alluring aqua eyes, she reminds us that Some Girls, the cool ones at least, dance to the beat of their own drum. We believe that being different is good, and that we don’t always have to conform. We can grow, dream, and be anything we want.

To keep it weird and different we hand-dipped these suckers, allowing the wax to melt down the sides of the glass to create a unique look for each individual bottle.

Alright, how is it? HOLY SHIT ARE WE PSYCHED ABOUT THIS WINE. It's funky, fresh, and oh so much fun. Chill this wine down for about 30 minutes prior to opening and dance to your own beat.

About Carbonic Maceration
Say what? Let us break it down for you. Most wine is made from a standard yeast-fueled fermentation, where we destem grapes, place them into tanks, and allow naturally occurring or manually added yeast strains to convert the grape juice into alcohol. With wines made via Carbonic Maceration, fermentation begins inside each individual berry. Crazy, right?

To pull this off, we first place whole grape clusters of Cinsaut into our fermentation tanks and then pump the sealed vats full of carbon dioxide to remove any oxygen. This causes the berries to release an enzyme that functions similarly to yeast and begins turning the grape sugars into alcohol. After a certain amount of time in tank (ours took nine days), the wine reaches 2% alcohol by volume, and the berries begin to burst. From there, we put the fermenting clusters through our press, then back into the fermentation tank they go. At this point, native yeasts that naturally occur on the fruit finish the fermentation process and we place the wine into neutral French oak barrels to await bottling.

Why did we do this? Carbonic maceration increases fresh, fruity aromatics and flavors in wine.

Because we went au natural on this one, there was no fining, filtering, or any additions to the wine throughout the entire process. That means it's going to be dirty, which knowing you, you'll like.

Snows Crossing Vineyard
The Snows Crossing Vineyard is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, close to the town of Camino which is in the Apple Hill District of El Dorado at an elevation of 3100’. It is one of the highest elevated vineyards in all of California. Comprised of unique red volcanic soils, weathered from ancient ash flows, high levels of decomposed granite, and iron oxide makes this an ideal place for growing world-class Rhone varieties like Cinsault.

We got word of this special vineyard in the spring of 2018 through our highly talented winegrower friend, Ken Musso, who manages the property. We had long been on the hunt for more unique varieties and when Ken drove us up to Snows Crossing to show us his prized Cinsault and Tocai Friulano blocks, we committed to the site and the grapes right on the spot. The words “we'll take em” probably left our lips about 2 minutes after we stepped foot in the vineyard.