A week ago Friday Michael and I headed out to beautiful Santa Cruz to visit with Barry Jackson, who produces Equinox, one of the best sparkling wines made in California.
We are getting ready to disgorge our 1998 Blanc de Blanc SCM sparkling wine, and we are having Barry handle the logistics of the project (we don't own the equipment necessary to disgorge, dose and cork sparkling wine.
It was a fascinating process as Barry prepared a series of flight with various components in the dosage and at varying levels of sweetness.
Our 2000 Blanc de Blanc was bottled with no dose, so called brut natural, brut zero or ultra brut. We began our trials at that level but found that the complex yeast aromas of this late-disgorged bottling demanded a bit more. Following another series of samples we decided upon 5g/L, or .5%, still well under the maximum of 10g/L or 1% for 'brut' designation. This 'dry' style seems to better fit our taste for sparkling wine as the acidity is emphasized.
I think the extra time en tirage has really benefited the wine and I'm pretty excited about the result, some 10 years after vintage!
2 comments:
Nathan, Ryan and I stopped in to see Bary on saturday. I learned a great deal about the process of making Sparkling, and fell in love with Barry's Fiano white wine. Lovely! - Sara
Sara,
Barry is great! I was stoked to see he was making Fiano in CA, I've never seen one. I've yet to try it but will have to make a point of it.
Thanks for the comment! Hope the puppy is doing well.
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