En Cavale "Fox Hil Vineyard" 2022 Sangiovese Mendocino

750ml bottle

13.2% abv

Sangiovese can be made in a variety of styles all over the world, not just Italy, and it’s the winemaker’s hope that this Mediterranean staple finds the same level of diversity in California. This interpretation hopefully recalls the scrub brush and juniper found along the coast of Tuscany, and the firm tannins, intense dark fruit and buoyant acidity common to the Sangiovese grown in Corsica.

Both lots started with a semi-carbonic fermentation for roughly a week before treading up the berries to go for more maceration. After primary fermentation, everything aged in neutral French oak barrels for 12 months, and then the different lots were blended in September 2022 and a small amount of SO2 was added before being bottled 5 weeks later.

Fox Hill Vineyard on the Talmage Bench in Mendocino County is a special place, reimagined in the 1980s and 90s as a smorgasbord buffet library of Italian grape varieties, including multiple clones of Sangiovese, all planted in an uplifting ancient riverbed composed of eroded gravels, sandstone and quartz soils. Managed and farmed with organic practices for a decade by Sam Bilbro, with Evan Lewandowski and Chris Brockway now continuing Sam’s work – it’s a family affair.

En Cavale is a collaboration between good friends Wolfgang Weber and Chad Hinds (Iruai). Their idea was to team up and make soulful, yet accessible expressions of old-school Californian wine with a hat tip to many of their favorite wines from France and Italy. All of the fruit is sourced from organically-farmed vineyards and extreme care is practiced in the cellar with native yeasts carrying out fermentations, sulfur additions kept to a minimum (if any are made at all), and no filtration.