Matthiasson "Cressida Vineyard" 2023 Vermentino Los Carneros Napa Valley

750ml bottle

13% abv

763 cases produced.

This Vermentino will make you feel the salt spray of the ocean, refreshing and lip-smacking. If you love salty seafood whites, this is your wine.

Notes: Our Vermentino has oodles of texture from the shale soil along with zesty acidity from the cool Carneros climate. That interplay is what makes a white wine like this so compelling. Besides the gorgeous texture, you will find notes of ripe orchard fruit, mandarin orange, juicy lemon, along with lifting herbal notes such as tarragon or chervil. All of this is carried by a broad, powerful expression of Vermentino.

Pairings: Fantastic with all kinds of spring and summer fare. The textural contrast between zesty acidity and broad minerality stands up to intensely flavored Mediterranean foods like pesto, peak-season summer veggies and wood-oven roasted fish.

Story: We purchased the Cressida Vineyard along with our partners Perry Tam and Laura Yip in 2022. It is planted along the spine of a ridgetop in the upper section of Los Carneros, overlooking the Bay, with the San Francisco skyline clearly visible across the water. It receives the perfect balance of warm sun and cooling winds that come straight off the Pacific and through the Golden Gate. The soils are shale from an ancient inland sea, which lend a distinct minerality to the wines. Raptors hover overhead, riding the winds as the Bay breezes meet the Cressida hillside.

Farming & Winemaking: To preserve the fresh and crunchy character and keep the alcohol moderate, the grapes were harvested on the early side while they still had beautiful natural acidity. We then split the fruit into two separate fermentation lots. The riper portion of the vineyard was fermented on the skins to capture all the gorgeous texture, minerality, and aromatics of an orange wine. The less ripe portion of the vineyard went direct to press and was pressed whole cluster like a more traditional white wine. The juice from this second lot was fermented in neutral barrels. The lots were blended after fermentation to achieve the best of both worlds — bright acidity and textured depth.

Tech: Only native yeasts were used in the fermentation. The pH is 3.2, the TA is 7.6 g/l, and the alcohol is 13.0%.  

 – Winemaker's notes