| Russian River Valley | Lennox Vineyards | Sonoma County, CA |
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Vintage 2007... 2007 was relatively cool and dry - - until the very end. Production was low but quality was excellent. We picked our last fruit on October 11th just before several days of heavy rain. Winter fertilizer, lime, and cover crop seed are out and the early rain will give the cover crop a head start.
More Pinot Noir, please... We are going to pull out some of the Chardonnay at Bravo Toro and put in more Pinot Noir this spring. And at the house, we'll continue grafting the Chardonnay over to only Pinot Noir. This is partly due to the very good results we have gotten from the Pinot and consistently (too) low yield on the Chardonnay. Also, despite the rash of Pinot Noir vineyards going in lately, we think Russian River Pinot Noir will be what Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon has been for decades (profitable).
The winery... Our effort to convert a garage at the house into a winery (500 case limit nano-winery) is well under way. The facility should be ready by Christmas. Then we can start the process of becoming bonded ... We shouldn't have any trouble being ready for our first official vintage of Lennox Vineyards estate wine - 2008.
The homemade wine... While we work on becoming a sanctioned winery, we continue to use the grapes from the home vineyard and some Merlot planted along a fence at the Bravo Toro vineyard for practice. To get things out of the way for work in the winery, we had a flurry of bottling this summer. The 2006 Pinot came out great (which is good becasue the 2005 is all but gone). The Merlot is quite nice. We are going to graft all the syrah over to Merlot in the spring - we never got a wine we liked from the Syrah in three tries. The Chardonnay is good but perhaps we were just so spoiled by the 2003 and 2004 (down to the last few bottles) that it will take something really special to impress us. Plus a couple of months in the bottle will help all of them ... There is a barrel of Chardonnay and one of Pinot Noir from this year just starting the journey to greatness.. We are very happy to give this homemade wine away to friends, family, and new friends. We're serious: we're running out of space to keep it! Give us a call.