As you may remember, I'm making 20 or so cases of chardonnay-viognier at Sannino Bella Vita Vineyard this year. A couple weeks ago, I went out to the winemaking center to taste its progress, help rack the wine and talk with owners Lisa and Anthony Sannino.
This picture is looking down into the tank after we pumped the wine out to clean out the lees and tartrate crystals. It took quite a bit of scrubbing to get the tank completely clean, a not-so-subtle reminder that winemaking is 80% cleaning.
The final blend is 60% viognier and 40% chardonnay (both lots of fruit sourced from Martha Clara Vineyards), all fermented in stainless steel without any malo-lactic fermentation. It it's youth, the wine is showing some nice citrus (grapefruit, lemon rind) flavors with pear and apple in the background. We might make a slight adjustment to the acidity to make it a bit brighter, but I'm very pleased with the progress so far.
We'll probably be bottling in about 6 weeks.