Hello Everyone,
It has been a while since we’ve had some new wines for all of your Zaltos, Zwiesels, Riedels, or dollar store stemless tumblers (no discrimination here!). We are so happy to be bringing new vintages of our three main wines to you and to share news of exciting liquid treasures forthcoming! Just a few nitty gritty details to run through before some info on our new releases:
The release window will run from 9am PST on Monday, September 19th through 10pm PST on Sunday, October 2nd.
For local friends we will be hosting two pickup days at Jefferies General in downtown Napa. If you plan on attending one of those pickup events, please select one of the pickup dates from the dropdown during the “Shipping” portion of the checkout process. If you are unable to attend the pickup days but wish to pick up your wine at another time, please reach out to Kat to coordinate.
Pickup dates at Jefferies General
1416 2nd St, Napa, CA 94559
Saturday, October 8th from 1-5pm
Saturday, October 15th from 1-5pm
For shipping customers, wines will begin shipping on Monday, September 26th (temperatures permitting) and will continue to ship as orders flow through. You will receive tracking information once wine is shipped--please remember someone over 21 years of age must be present to sign for the wine upon delivery. For any special requests, please fill out the "Notes" section during checkout
2021 Unti Vineyards Vermentino
Our second year working with these 4 precious rows of Vermentino nestled at the bottom of a tiny, east-facing slope on the Healdsburg side of Dry Creek Road proved to be another delicious entry into the Filomena lineup. The fruit was picked the first week of September and was whole cluster pressed to two neutral French oak barrels and one stainless steel drum. It slowly bubbled away through fermentation with minimal batonnage (lees stirring), before aging for 9 months in those same neutral barrels.
The resulting wine is bursting with apricots and honeydew melon. Bright Asian pear and grilled peaches flow across the palate while welcomed acidity, slightly saline macadamia, and honeyed citrus wrap around the tongue. A surprisingly lengthened finish simultaneously quenches your thirst while beckoning another sip as soon as you put the glass down. A perfect wine for your tables as we move into fall.
$28 per bottle (50 cases produced)
2020 Ricci Vineyards St. Laurent
The Filomena-Ricci connection continues with our 3rd version of this delicate Carneros beauty. What also continues with this wine is just how damn drinkable it remains, year after year. Once again, we fermented this wine with partial carbonic maceration (about 33% this year) and once again, the wine is chock-full of herbal and botanical aromas with beautiful dark fruit flavors. Aged for 9 months in 50% stainless steel and 50% once-used 400L Boutes puncheon.
Raspberry compote, bergamot, Vietnamese cinnamon, and Mission fig on the nose. Bright pop of acid and cherry lift up front only to slowly trickle through the midpalate to the finish like the most satisfying game of Plinko. Delicate tannins and salinity wash over the palate, receding like waves on the beach, leaving an imprint where they once were. Violets and pink peppercorn walk you up to the carbonic edge as the wine opens, inviting further tastes to see just how close to that edge you can get.
$24 per bottle (65 cases produced)
2017 Griffin’s Lair Syrah
Thinking about this wine certainly stirs up some buried memories. The fires in Santa Rosa, Sonoma, & Calistoga put a stressful exclamation point onto the end of the 2017 harvest. While this wine was safely picked, fermented, and barreled down just before the fires started the first week of October, getting the rest of the 2017 wines (at Bedrock that year) through fermentation and into barrel while being evacuated from Sonoma and helping displaced friends dominates memories of this vintage.
That all being said…oh Griffin’s Lair, your savory beauty shines through those memories and continues to leave me agape at the flavors coming out of this vineyard. This wine was fermented indigenously, 100% whole cluster with around 25 days on skins. Pressed to two neutral 500L puncheons and aged for 16 months, this wine was bottled in February 2019 and has been bottle aging ever since.
Briny tapenade and ferric notes, echoes of black cherry and plum mixed with slow roasted, dry rubbed prime rib fill the nose immediately after popping the cork. The palate is brooding, almost sanguine, rich and saline. Fruit starts to show its face after about an hour of being open. Blackberry leads the brigade, followed closely by dates and the slightest hint of ripe tamarind. Enough structure to support all of the flavors found within, this wine will only become further complex as it ages.
$42 per bottle (75 cases produced)
To wrap things up, just a few notes on harvest and exciting new Filomena wines coming down the pipeline in 2023. It has been a whirlwind 2022 harvest, with a big heat wave sizzling through Northern California the week that September took over the calendar from August. We managed to get both St. Laurent and *spoiler warning* Cabernet Pfeffer in the day before the heat really got going. Vermentino, well positioned at the bottom of its cooling ravine, followed just a few days later.
Malbec from Massa Vineyard in Carmel Valley (a new wine for Filomena that you will all see in 2023 and beyond) and Syrah from Griffin’s Lair found a prime window towards the end of the heat wave to get picked the following week, with both lots benefitting from cooler nights beginning to break the heat and help the grapes retain what acid they could. We are still waiting for Massa Cabernet Sauvignon, another new wine we’ll be sharing in the not-so-distant future, to hit the desired flavors and ripeness; we’ll likely bring that in within the next week.
We are incredibly stoked about both the wines in bottle being offered today as well as the ferments ticking away at the winery as we write this. Eternal gratitude to the growers we work with and their tireless vineyard crews for putting in the often unseen and constantly underappreciated hard work, lovingly tending the vines from which we source our grapes. Thank you to the crew at Green & Red for supporting our little side project. Thank you to my stunning and incredible better half, Kat, for literally everything, especially during those insanely long harvest days/nights. And finally, thank YOU for reading this whole thing, supporting us, and for being a part of the Filomena family. We hope you enjoy the wines and are excited to continue sharing this drinkable journey with you all!
Cheers & Love,
Luke, Kat, & Kuma
