Zepaltas Wines

With Syrah supposedly being such a bad word these days, we are grateful that we are able to sell all of our Syrah without a problem. Hopefully it is because people think that we do a great job with the fruit, but I like to think that it is because Rosella’s Vineyard is such a great site for Syrah. Also, the fact that Gary Franscioni knows what he is doing when it comes to farming syrah.
After the fruit is harvested (night pick under the lights-always) it is transported to the winery in refrigerated trucks. We like to keep it simple in the cellar: cold soak the fruit for 5 days, we foot stomp and hand punch down the fermentors twice a day, warm up the fruit, ferment it (50% whole cluster on this wine) to dryness, press the wine to barrel, age it in barrel for 16 months. We may rack it if the wine needs it, or not at all. Lastly, we bottle it unfiltered and let it sit another 6 months before releasing it to you.
On the nose, scents of blueberry, blackberry and pepper come flying out of the glass. On the palate the wine is vibrant and loaded with flavors of anise, bacon and almost Grenache like flavors. The finish is quite lengthy due to the chalky tannins. This wine should age great as it always seems to do. I recently had the 04,05,06 &07 Rosella’s next to each other in a tasting, and they all were doing great and showing no signs of fatigue. In fact, the older the wine, the better it was showing.