Robert Hall Cavern Select Carignan

About the Wine

This wine aged in puncheons for 16 month. It comes from 2 different Templeton Gap vineyards and incorporates 2 different winemaking styles. 66% of the wine was fermented traditionally and 34% was made using the carbonic maceration technique. What this give us is a wine that has a lot of aromatic complexity but that is very light on it’s feet. Carbonic maceration is a winemaking technique that is applied primarily to light- to medium-bodied red wines to make them fruitier and to soften their tannins. Most wine transforms from grape juice into alcohol via a yeast fermentation. Bunches of grapes are picked, destemmed, and crushed. The yeast, whether naturally present on the grape skins or added by winemakers, “eat” the natural sugars in the grape juice and converts them into alcohol. In carbonic maceration, however, the initial fermentation is not caused by yeast, but instead occurs intracellularly, or from the inside out. This method involves filling a sealed vessel with carbon dioxide and then adding whole, intact bunches of grapes. In this oxygen-free environment, the berries begin to ferment from the inside. They use the available CO2 to break down sugars and malic acid (one of the main acids in grapes) and produces alcohol along with a range of compounds that affect the wine’s final flavor. At the same time, polyphenols, known to most as tannins and anthocyanins, make their way from the grapes’ skin to the pulp, which turn the white flesh to a pink color. Once the alcohol reaches 2%, the berries burst, releasing their juice naturally. A normal yeast fermentation will then take the wine to dryness.