For years I’ve wished for another chance to re-do the 1991 vintage. It was our first vintage under our own label, highlighting Zinfandel from the family vineyard. I was working at Dehlinger Winery at the time, where we worked with earlier and later varieties in the relatively cooler part of Russian River Valley. Being just 30 years old and having only 15 vintages as a home winemaker and 12 years as a cellar worker at commercial wineries [I’m still clearly a cellar worker at 62] under my belt of which 8 vintages were post UCD graduation, I was not very experienced with the different ways to approach a vintage outside of ‘numbers’ (but I was learning). [‘Numbers’ are the juice analysis like sugar Brix levels, pH, total acidity, etc.] What I had begun to realize was the disconnect between those values and what else lurks inside the skins and seeds of the grapes that make red wine red. Following up after the vintage, one could see the disconnect if one remembered what the fruit and vines were like at the time. The early part of 2023 became as close to that re-do of 1991 that I have wished for. The Brix was lagging all other measures/assessments of ripeness that folks have recently become accustomed to, plus weather was mild and cool, allowing the vines to make changes slowly.
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