Las Jaras 'Slipper Slippers' Nouveau 2023

65% Zinfandel, 35% Carignan

A Nouveau is born! Nouveau is the name given to the first wine of the vintage. The style originated out of Beaujolais, just south of Burgundy where they make wines from Gamay Noir using the technique carbonic maceration. In carbonic maceration, open top tanks that have been inertized with carbon dioxide are filled with whole cluster grapes and then sealed for a number of days. Pioneering wine chemist and natural winemaker Jules Chauvet employed the technique in the mid 20st century to make light, fruity and delicious wines. This is essentially how we made this wine! The wine is mega delicious. It has a nose full of blackberry, red plum and cocoa. There are gobs of raspberry, chocolate covered cherry, and boysenberry on the juicy palate. The acidity is balanced and zippy and in the finish there is cocoa powder-like tannin that keeps the wine fresh on the palate.

Vineyards: All of the grapes used for this blend are farmed organically. Harvest was very late this year and we were fortunate enough to have some wonderful grape sources in Lodi where grapes tend to ripen earlier. Cherryhouse was planted in the 40’s, Shinn vineyard in the 20’s, and the Gary Venturi vineyard was planted in the mid 50’s. 

Winemaking The pick dates for this wine were August 31, September 8th and 22nd. To make this wine we employed carbonic maceration which is a perfect method for grapes that are picked earlier with higher acidity. After 10 days of carbonic maceration at about 55F, we warmed up the tanks and gave them a daily pump over for four days to get a bit more color and a cleaner ferment. After this period we pressed the grapes lightly added 10ppm SO2 and fermented each lot separately in a warm tank. Once the wines were dry we stored them cool for a number of weeks and achieved good settling and clarity. Two days before bottling we racked the tank and added 9ppm SO2 to protect from any oxygen the wine picked up during bottling.