Rootdown Wine Cellars "St. Amant Vineyard" 2023 Trousseau Amador County

750ml bottle

12.7% abv

100% Trousseau

The Saint Amant Vineyard is near and dear to Mike Lucia’s heart; being one of the very first vineyards he started working with when Rootdown was born in 2014.

Following a frost year in 2022, we were blessed with an amazing 2023 vintage. By far the best I’ve worked with since 2014. This growing season allowed us to harvest in 2 picks. One for acid and one for a little ripper flavor profile. Fermented in small open top oak fermenters and small stainless steal tanks, we found our perfect combination of whole cluster vs de-stemming. Here’s the recipe for success:) ⅓ 100% De-stemmed - ⅓ 100% Whole cluster - ⅓ 50% De-Stemmed 50% Whole cluster.

Mike prefers a gentle mixing of the cap to capture more delicate aromatics and the choice of fermenting styles allow for a semi carbonic style in the finished wine. The wine is aged in neutral barrels for 8 months until bottling.

St. Amant was planted in 1972 to ungrafted Zinfandel. Later that decade, a section of this Zinfandel was grafted over to five Portuguese varieties after the owners became interested in Port-style wines. Bastardo (née Trousseau), one of the few Portuguese varieties UC Davis had at the time, was St. Amant’s first Portuguese crop in 1981. After a spell with Phylloxera, a pesky root-chewing louse, they replanted their Port varieties on Phylloxera-resistant rootstock. The 1.8 acres of organically farmed grapes that Rootdown sources in this vineyard were planted in 2004 on Honcut soil (deep, well-drained soil formed into somewhat coarsely textured alluvium from base igneous and granitic rocks) atop floodplains and moderately sloping alluvial fans.

TA: 4.9g/L

pH: 3.64

Bottled June 2023

320 Cases Produced

 – winemaker's notes