HARVEST 2024 BRINGS THE SPARKLE
Our favorite time of year is upon us: Harvest! The start of “crush,” our team is hard at work in our Russian River Valley vineyards, hand-harvesting our traditional Champagne grapes for sparkling production — Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay.
AN EYE ON BLANC DE BLANCS
This year, our Blanc de Blancs (one of Nicole Hitchcock’s favorites) is bound to steal the spotlight.
“A near perfect growing season, the Chardonnay fruit for our Blanc de Blancs has the acid balance that I’m looking for—bright but not sharp. There’s also a whisper of fruit expression with tart, citrus notes. For sparkling grapes, I’m not looking for advanced flavor because much of these characteristics will come out during sparkling fermentation.”
– Nicole Hitchcock, Head Winemaker
TRANSLATING THE SOILS
Like all of our sparkling wines, the grapes for our Blanc de Blancs are harvested early in the season. At J, we are fortunate to source from six estate vineyards, five within the Russian River Valley and one in the Sonoma Coast AVA. Each vineyard has its own signature in terms of soils, topography and weather patterns, and Nicole relates these environmental characteristics to the personality of the wine.
From Night Harvesting to Gentle Pressing
The fruit is carefully hand-picked at night and delivered to the winery in the early morning hours while still cool. To craft our Blanc de Blancs, meaning white from whites, whole clusters of Chardonnay grapes are placed in our special French Coquard press (rarely found in the U.S.) to perform an ultra-gentle pressing of the grapes. Similar to the production of all of our sparkling wines, the Coquard almost acts like a basket press, with the juice straining out with minimal maceration of the grapes. This prevents astringency or bitterness and ensures a clean, refreshing mouthfeel that is consistently lauded and always enjoyed. We take traditional champagne press cuts, cuvée and taille, and keep them separate until assembling the cellar blends.
The Patience of En Tirage Aging
Once the final blending decision has been made, our Blanc de Blancs rests on its lees for about four months before bottling. It is then aged for five years en tirage in our cellars, developing deeper complexity with time. Once cellar aging is completed, we carefully riddle the bottles to collect and remove the yeast sediment. Following disgorging, a dosage is added for balance, putting our Blanc de Blancs in the Extra Brut category. Finally, the wine is aged an additional six months under cork before its release.
The patience that Nicole and her team exhibit when producing our sparkling wines cannot be overstated. For the deeper, richer notes found on our Blanc de Blancs, time is a powerful tool.