NV BLASPHÈME I

Albemarle County

Traditional Method

ARTWORK/NAME:

  • Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing 118, a prism forms from converging twenty-eight randomized points, one for each month of aging in bottle, into two points representing the base and reserve wines. The prism is meant to invoke a) the overlaid foliation of metamorphic granite found in the vineyard and b) the overlaid vintages of perpetual reserve creating a new collective wine.

  • It’s blasphemous for us hybrid and apple folk to work with vinifera, but it’s actually grown well and is suited to our blasphemous oxidative sparkling program, so here we are.

 FRUIT/SITE:

  • 100% petit manseng from Mount Juliet Vineyard in Albemarle County. Gravelly clay loam of granitic schist, 400-600’ elevation. Robbie Corpora, grower.

  • Robbie is one of the most progressive growers in Virginia. The understory is not mowed or tilled, and some biodynamic preparations are utilized.

SEASON:

  • Another early spring with frosts, but without widespread losses. A cooler, wetter 2022 (slightly) tempered the high sugars and acids of petit manseng, allowing for a bit longer hangtime before harvest in the first days of September.

FERMENTATION/DEVELOPMENT:

  • The perpetual reserve wine ages sous voile without sulfur in a 350 L neutral French oak barrel. It makes up 39% for this bottling.

  • Grapes were hand harvested and cooled to cellar temperature overnight. Whole clusters were foot stomped and delicately pressed in a manual basket over twelve hours. Press fractions were combined, settled overnight, and racked together to ferment in one 500 L neutral French oak puncheon and demijohn. Fermentation lasted almost two months.

  • At the tail end of sugar depletion, the active current fermentation is blended with a portion of the reserve wine to finish in the bottle with a target carbonation of roughly four volumes. An equal portion of young wine is withheld from bottling to refill the reserve barrel.

  • Bottles aged on lees for a minimum of 28 months before being riddled and disgorged by hand without dosage. Specific disgorgement date is stamped on the bottle. No SO2 additions were made.

LAB:

  • pH: 3.18 | TA: 7.9 g/L | ABV: 12.44% | RS: 0.83 g/L | Added SO2: 0 ppm