2016 PINOT NOIR
rikolto du
VINEYARDs | lingua franca estate, hope well
APPELLATION | EOLA-AMITY HILLS
WINEMAKER | Thomas Savre
HARVEST DATES | august 29–september 10, 2016
BOTTLING | february 6, 2018
ALCOHOL | 13.5%
PRODUCTION | 5 cases
The Wine
For Lingua Franca’s second vintage, Thomas Savre, winemaker, and Kimberly Abrahams, assistant winemaker, have selected the best lot of wine from the very first harvest of our own Lingua Franca Estate fruit. He augmented that with fruit from Mimi Casteel’s impeccable Hope Well Vineyard, not far from us in Hopewell village. The completed wine shows a classic black and red fruit character, with velvety tannins and layers of flavor. It has a long, intense finish. The vineyard soils are volcanic in origin, with a small amount of Missoula flood sediments, giving the wine a balance between mineral and fruit components. The fruit was predominantly destemmed, with around 30% whole cluster fruit added to the fermenters. Once in tank, the must was pumped over once or twice a day, and punched down only twice for the entire process, by gentle, traditional pigeage methods—by foot. The wine was aged in well-seasoned French oak barrels coming from a variety of coopers and diverse forests with only 20% new.
Rikolto Du, Esperanto for Harvest II, is a combination of the finest estate fruit from Lingua Franca’s first crop and Mimi Casteel’s exceptional vineyard near the village of Hopewell. Rikolto Du celebrates Lingua Franca’s first year of making wine in our own facility, which was completed just in time for the harvest of 2016. This should become a great collector’s item. Rikolto Du reflects the deft hand of winemaking team Thomas Savre and Dominique Lafon. They paid close attention to the balance between ripeness and freshness, resulting in an expressive, well-defined wine true to its terroir.
The Winery
Lingua Franca is the partnership between Burgundy legend Dominique Lafon, sommelier Larry Stone and business partner David Honig. They were quickly joined by the young and talented winemaker Thomas Savre, who has work experience at some of the finest wineries in Burgundy, including Domaine Dujac and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. The winery is based upon two exemplary estate vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley: Lingua Franca Estate Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills and Bunker Hill Estate in Salem. Our philosophy is to respect the flavors of the place where the grapes are grown, making well-defined and differentiated wine from expressive vineyard sites.
Learn more about Lingua Franca
Follow: @linguafrancawines
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