Subject to Change Wine Company, "Cuvee 831" NV

This is a loving, co-fermented homage of a wine from Subject to Change Wine Company who operate out of Mendocino County on the North Coast of California. The project is headed up by a collaboration of friends, between winemakers Alex Pomerantz (formerly of Kivelstadt Cellars in Sonoma) and Brad Friedman (formerly of Big Basin in the Santa Cruz Mountains), as well as fellow co-founders Kim and Joe Rosenberg. The original ethos - and one practiced through today - is to key in on organically-farmed single-vineyard sites, typically tended by California growers and farmers they’ve long respected, especially in terms of how heroic and historically undersung these growers have been in the ever-burgeoning world of California wine. The Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes in this cuvee specifically were sourced from Coastview Vineyard, an otherworldly site on an exposed ridge, riddled with decomposed granite and limestone, of the eastern slopes of the Salinas Valley at elevations between 2300-2400 feet. This site is within the Central Coast AVA (so, pretty far south from where Subject to Change vinifies the grapes up in Mendocino), inland from Monterey Bay, and more specifically in a growing area known as the Mt. Harlan AVA of the North Central Coast.

Tasting Notes: Pinot Noir snatched from the sky! Chardonnay’s naturally citric character provides the wings while Pinot the undercarriage -- this wine flies. Wild red berries and zippy acidity without any weight. All this language of intensity belies the delicacy of this bottling’s length - how it wanders off on a zephyr rather than a storm.

Vinification: From 30 year-old vines atop decomposed granitic and limestone soils at 2300-2400ft elevation, 2 tons of Pinot Noir grapes and 1 ton of Chardonnay grapes are hand-harvested. Prior to fermentation, the Pinot grapes are partially de-stemmed while the Chardonnay grapes are whole-cluster directly-pressed. A co-ferment then takes place kickstarted solely by ambient (native) yeast. Pigéage and pumpovers are periodically executed over 55 days before the wine is matured for 10 months in neutral french oak. No SO2, unfined, unfiltered, this bottling sits at 12.5% ABV. (The cuvee is an homage to Julien Guillot’s Burgundian co-ferment known as Cuvée 910).