It was a brutal year in the Maglite vineyard. The owner pruned less than half of the vineyard and never disclosed this to us. We discovered it after budbreak, when it was too late to go in and prune ourselves. We did put a team together and performed an emergency shoot and cluster thinning, but the damage had been done. This old vineyard, dating from about 1905, beset by years of drought, was now set back further by pushing too many shoots and trying to set too many clusters. 

We monitored the vineyard closely during the growing season and made one more thinning pass.

We began our white harvest 5 days after the red harvest, on August 14. This fruit was more plump than the Grenache Noir, but still intense and almost woody. We harvested the pruned section first, and allowed the unpruned section to hang for another week, and then completed the harvest on August 20.

We made a wine of deep and intense character. We foot-treaded and then whole-cluster pressed immediately, but still made a wine a kind of tawny pink in color. It is tannic from the tiny berries, but not quite like a skin-fermented wine. Another wonder of white wine from the desert sands outside of Los Angeles.

20 cases.