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CURRENT RELEASE
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Rootstock Wine Bar is excited to release the April wine club featuring owner/winemaker Jeff Gaffner of Saxon Brown Wines. The Rootstock staff were given a special opportunity by Mr Gaffner to walk together among multiple vineyards in Sonoma and learn about Mr. Gaffner’s winemaking style and wine growing practices.
Inspired by his early work at the original, pre-Beringer Chateau St. Jean, he was exposed to working with multiple single-vineyard wines. Aiming to capturing site signatures, he does not want all his wines to taste the same. Making more elegant styled wines with minimal extractions, he emulates Burgundy in cool-temperature-winemaking, producing age-worthy, bright and pretty wines grown in Trophy Vineyards that (if classified like Burgundy) might be Grand Cru or 1er Cru. Wines are released when ready, not by calendar at less than 3,500 cases per vintage. Winery is named after the willful heroine in Jack London’s novel “Valley of the Moon.”
“Gaffner claims that each vineyard has a personality you get to know , the longer you work with it. For Gaffner, winemaking is about understanding the subtleties that make each vineyard site special.” Gaffner spends a tremendous amount of time in each vineyard, observing the unfolding of each season to better understand what the vintage has to offer. All of the single vineyards are from cool climates resulting in longer hang time, small berries and clusters, a lower juice to pulp ratio, vine balance and full ripeness. These same vineyards all have daily cool winds that shut down photosynthesis, creating a “wind signature” of concentrated flavors, lower brix ripeness and slight skin-thickening (for reds, this adds floral elements). - Wine Spectator
Single Cru will receive the 2014 Saxon Brown 'Ferrington Vineyard' Pinot Noir (Anderson Valley)
Seasonal Cru & Premier Cru will also receive the 2015 Saxon Brown Stonewall Vineyard Zinfandel (Sonoma Coast)
Grand Cru will also receive 2015 Saxon Brown El Diablo Vineyard Grenache (Russian River) and the 2014 Saxon Brown Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay (Sonoma Coast)
Collector's Cru will receive the 2018 Scarecrow M. Etain Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley)