2023 DREAM DEFERRED CHARDONNAY
WINEMAKER’S NOTES
100% Chardonnay from Frenchman Hills Vineyard in the Wahluke Slope AVA.
The 2023 Dream Deferred Chardonnay shows great aromatic complexity and impressive palate concentration. The wine shows beautiful balance of ripe fruit, vibrant acidity, and rich lees texture. Explosive aromatics of pear, tangerine peel, allspice, vanilla, brioche, and hazelnuts. The palate has well delineated notes of pear, apple, lemon curd, tangerine peel, honeycomb, and brioche. Minerality and spice notes echo of the long, lifted finish. This is a very complex, rich, concentrated style that drinks well now but will improve in the cellar over the next 5-7 years.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
The clusters were pressed and the juice settled for 12 hours. The wine was barrel fermented: 33% new French Oak, 33% neutral French oak puncheons (Troncais), 33% stainless steel. The wine was aged on the lees for 19 months with biweekly batonnage. One third of the wine went through secondary fermentation. The wine was not racked until bottling and no fining agents were employed. The wine was very lightly filtered to capture any remaining lees. The alcohol is 14.4%, pH is 3.67, and the titratable acidity is 6.1 g/L.
CASES PRODUCED 98
VARIETALS 100% Chardonnay
APPELLATION Frenchman Hills Vineyard, Wahluke Slope
LABEL STORY
When Pinto’s oldest boy Aidan turned 11 years old, Pinto would make him memorize poems (Aidan loved him for it - what boy doesn't want to memorize poems?).
The first poem to memorize was "Harlem [2]" by poet Langston Hughes. The poem starts by asking the question "What happens to a dream deferred?” The poem is really about racial inequality in post-World War II United States. But Aidan read it literally and applied it to Pinto - what would have happened to Pinto if he didn't follow his dreams of starting a winery? It is now Pinto’s favorite way of interpreting this poem.