Portico Hills Vineyard
In the harvest of 2017 I was introduced to two new vineyards, one of which was Portico Hills Vineyard, producing their first crop with this new Mourvèdre clone. The first time I visited these sites, I was truly impressed at the stature of the vines, the color in the fruit and the flavor of the grapes early in the season, unlike anything I had ever tasted before. Wow! I thought. This really is the unicorn clone. The one we’ve all been waiting for.
60 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA FALL 2018
Once I harvested and processed the fruit in the winery, its distinctive characteristics were never ending. In my experience, Mourvèdre generally takes a day or two to color up in the fermentation bin. The first day with this new clone created a deep, magenta-colored juice. I could go on and on about fermentation aromas, acid profiles, development in barrel during aging… This grape was an anomaly to all of the other Mourvèdre I had worked with.