Our 2023's are in the bottle!
A sneak peek (and taste!) of our newest wines in an exclusive advance-release offer.
Meeting you was like listening to a song for the first time and knowing it would be my favorite. ~ Anonymous
Absolutely the best yet
Here’s how the California Vintners Report characterized it: “California vintners are celebrating the 2023 Vintage as exceptional, following a late start to harvest. Plentiful winter rains revitalized the soils and encouraged healthy canopies while cooler temperatures across California in spring and summer allowed grapes to develop gradually, enjoying extra ripening time. Many vintners predict that the 2023 Vintage will be one of the finest in years, producing wines with beautiful flavors, vibrant acidity and remarkable balance.”
Has that happened? Oh yeah! This past Wednesday we bottled 22 barrels of our red varietals that had been aging in relative obscurity for the past 18 months. Bottling these wines was like giving birth to quadruplets after being pregnant for twice as long as normal—from a sultry love fest in that magical fall of 2023, to a burgeoning barrel room for the ensuing year and a half, to the gushing, impatient emergence of four perfect wines just a few days ago on March 26.
All four of our ultra-premium 2023 reds are lighter and brighter than previous vintages, with luscious, complex flavors, mouth-watering acidity, softer tannins, better controlled alcohol, and the promise of unrestrained drinkability.
Will they be even better after a year, or years, of bottle aging? Well… yes… of course they will. I strive to make them that way, ensuring they have the proper structure and balance to support a bloom of flavor and aroma over the next few dozen months. Does that mean you shouldn’t taste them now, while still in their childhood? Only if you’re into self-flagellation and other forms of draconian discipline.
I suggest what I always suggest when faced with this annual conundrum of deciding when a new wine will be ready to drink. Try a bottle now, try another bottle in six months, and another six months after that. You will be amazed at the progression and will likely trip over the sweet spot somewhere along the way!
In order to do just that I’ve put together a 2023 Vintage Advance-Release Tasting Case for just $29 a bottle and FREE SHIPPING at tinyvineyards.com. You’ll receive three bottles each of all four of our 2023 varietals to sample taste over the next year (as described above). Options are available for Half-Case and Three Bottle Packs as well.
Please consider buying this. It’s super helpful to us cashflow-wise at this time of the year, and as a wine aficionado you will get sooo much out of the experience. And I’ll be doing it right alongside you, emailing you at pivotal moments to discuss your personal observations on each wine, and sharing mine. We’ve done this every year so far and it’s been a blast. Let’s all do it for this amazing 2023 vintage!
What to expect with these wines
Every wine reacts differently to filtration, bottling, and bottle aging. All of my red wines are unfined and unfiltered; I rely instead on frequent gentle racking and long-term barrel-aging to naturally clarify them into beautiful gems of crystal-clear ruby and garnet. This also helps mitigate oxygen uptake and too much SO2 assimilation, which can contribute to bottle shock.
Ah yes, bottle shock—that very real and very angst-ridden few weeks to few months of the “dumbing down” of wine flavor, aroma and mouthfeel caused by the breaking apart of colloids (large, macro-molecular clumps of protein and polysaccharides) as the wine goes through the rigors of bottling and/or jostling from long distance transportation. Thankfully, left alone, bottle shock generally resolves itself as the colloids reassemble—which they will, have faith!—and often in even more favorable ways.
Again, it’s different for every varietal, but have you ever noticed that most of the everyday wines you commonly purchase arrive on the shelves almost exactly two years after their vintage date? A year for barrel-aging, a year for bottle-aging, drink. I like to believe that the wines of Tiny Vineyards Wine Company are a cut above your average supermarket wine but the evolution is the same, only longer.
When my wines first “reappear” from bottle shock they are often tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm and react positively to oxygen. So open a bottle and let it breathe, or even decant it to get your first taste of this veritable baby of a wine. Then smile with parental pride as the wine enters its “primary” stage over the next year, presenting exuberant fruitiness, bright acidity and sometimes astringent tannins. These are good signs for the more nuanced and dimensional teenage expression to follow as the tannins polymerize and soften in the bottle, the fruit rounds out, and the acid balances.
Zinfandels are usually best drunk when they’re young, within a year or two of bottling. Syrah and Cab can continue to improve for many years. Three to five years after bottling is often when the first notes of mature fruit begin to emerge and the finish becomes appreciably longer and more lingering. Who knows the taste trajectory of a red blend made from all three? We’ve made such a blend each year, but confirming the perfect time to drink it has been elusive. Experiencing a wine’s coming of age is one of the most powerful and rewarding gustatory revelations that exists.
Let me introduce you to the newest members of our family. For you curious wine geeks in the know, I’ve included each wine’s chemistry the day before bottling:
2023 Celestial Syrah — ABV 13.5%, pH 3.61, TA 5.78 g/L, RS 0.5 g/L With our second in a series of astronomy-themed labels (our 2021 Eclipse Malbec being the first). For several years now we’ve made a Syrah for blending, but this is the first vintage that we had enough good grapes to make and bottle it as a varietal. What the hell were we waiting for? From the back label, “During the 18 months this very bottle of wine spent aging in an oaken barrel the nighttime skies over northern California’s wine country were uncommonly ablaze with shimmering curtains of ethereal color. Was it a conferment of favor from the heavens? Wine has long been used to celebrate—or more likely mitigate fear of—celestial events from eclipses to comets to ‘light of dawn’ (an early term for Aurora Borealis). Could wine not also be enhanced by an alchemy of superlunary influence? There’s no question this Syrah was blessed by stardust—rich and bold with a peppery spice and notes of blueberry, black plum, chocolate and tobacco.”
2023 Wizined Zinfandel — ABV 15%, pH 3.65, TA 5.89 g/L, RS 0.8 g/L With our first in a planned series of interactive “wizined ones” portrayed on the label. We’ve always maintained that if one was going to make an ultra-premium varietal Zinfandel it had to be from very old, very special vines. And so we waited for five long years before providence provided. From the back label, “Grapevines are like people when they both reach old age. They become gnarly and wrinkled but manifest a spectacular beauty that makes them look wizened—which they truly are! Like people, grapevines are often at their very best when they are near their very oldest. Their output may be less, but it is of the highest quality due to all they have experienced and accumulated with age. Old Zinfandel vines produce grapes that are ultra-concentrated with flavor. They make the finest of wines, bold and sumptious, fruit forward yet complex and balanced, with smoky notes of exotic spice and black pepper. Our “Wizined” Zinfandel inside this bottle and the label on the front celebrate these elders and the treasures of time.”
2023 Requisite Red — ABV 14%, pH 3.69, TA 5.66 g/L, RS 0.5 g/L With our third in a series of composite labels of scenes from the vineyard. I’ve always had a lot of luck (I’d say skill, but that would probably be a misattribution) making this “oh, so Californian” red blend. But it always seems to evolve into a really BIG wine. I wondered what it might be like to make a lighter version, and the growing conditions of 2023 provided the perfect chemistry. From the back label, “Red blends are the heritage of California wines, as many historic vineyards were planted with a multiple of grape varieties that were harvested together. I’ve been working on this proprietary blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon for over seven years with the goal of making a wine so delicious and drinkable I could count on it for any meal. This is a mid-body foodie wine, complex and structured enough for a special event, but not so heavy as to overwhelm what is being served. It is beautifully balanced with notes of strawberry, black cherry, dark chocolate and spice. The mouthfeel is unquestionably seductive with gentle tannins and soft acidity.”
2023 Aerie Cabernet Sauvignon — ABV 14%, pH 3.67, TA 5.89 g/L, RS 0.8 g/L With the second use of our stylized label featuring the raptor from our summit vineyard. From the back label, “This exceptional Sonoma-style Cabernet Sauvignon comes from a tiny mountaintop vineyard we’ve been nurturing at the edge of Sonoma Valley AVA. It is lighter, brighter and more fruit forward than those heavier, more sultry expressions traditionally offered by its famous neighbors to the east, and as such it produces a unique fusion of flavor with notes of black cherry, currants, vanilla and spice in a bold, complex body of fresh acidity and rounded tannins. This sassy, modern refinement of Cabernet Sauvignon is unfiltered, unfined, and aged in French oak for 18 months. Serve it decanted with grilled meats, hearty stews, rich sauces, and other robust dishes—or with dark chocolate if your soul is in need.”