Here is the latest news about the Scherrer releases: past, present, and 1995 futures. Our proudest release, Rachel Ann Scherrer, was born on Father’s Day 6/16/96, weighing 7 1b, 6 oz.
It has been a hectic spring. Upon release of the 1994 Zinfandel in April, the wine disappeared even faster than the previous vintage did. Later, after being listed in The Wine Spectator’s list of “new producers to watch,” we found ourselves long out of wine, and with lots of calls to return from all over. There have even been a couple of callers who claimed to be intelligent life from Mars. Most recently, in issue 105 of The Wine Advocate. the 1994 Zin received a very good review (90 pts).
The 1995 harvest was another low crop year. We harvested the same vineyard areas as last year, so unfortunately, we were unable to increase the amount of wine made. My favorite part of the oldest vineyard block planted in 1912 (the ‘Old’ part), made a very intense, brooding, concentrated component for our wine this year. Another part of the vineyard (the ‘Mature’ part), made a really juicy, blackberry/raspberry wine with classical Zinfandel varietal character. Yet another area, nearest to the woods, gave us a very soft, lively wine with an interesting strawberry-rhubarb pie character. It was difficult to wait for this last area to ripen fully because of deer damage. They kept coming out of the woods during the night to sample the fruit and shoots, severely pruning the vines about six months too soon. This made the pros and cons of waiting for proper flavor development a passionately debated topic of family discussion. Anyway, the grapes not eaten by the deer, made it to the winery in good shape and all three areas complement each other quite well.
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