Harvest Moon Estate Zinfandel Pitts Home Ranch Estate 2002  750ml $108.00   Your Shopping Cart: Join one of the Harvest Moon Wine Clubs and save up to 30% on wines!

Vintage & Varietal

Vintage & Varietal: 2002 Pitts Home Ranch 100% Russian River Valley Zinfandel
401 cases produced. Bottled unfiltered in July 2004. Released in December 2004
Alcohol: 15.10% by volume 
Brix at Harvest: 26.8 Residual Sugar:  less than .08 G/100 ml; Ph = 3.19

Tasted on 3/2/09:  "This wine with nearly five years in the bottle is still on the incline.  With intense white pepper powder and spice aromas this fully integrated single-vineyard Zin fills the mouth with lush, rich dark cherries.  The finish though is what struck me as stunning.  The juicy finish lingered prominently for 49 loooong seconds.  Yeah, I timed it.  This balanced wine will knock your guests socks off as a preamble to 1st course, however paired on the 3rd or 4th course with rolled pepper filet with push the dinner mood into conversation overdrive.

Easily 5-8 MORE years in the cellar due mostly to the classic Russian River Valley acidity" - RP

Fewer than 16 cases remaining... 
 

Grower & Winemaker's Notes

Over the course of the 2002 growing season, over 50% of the Zinfandel fruit grown on the Estate was thinned (dropped on the ground) in order to produce the aromatic intensity that lies inside. Harvest Moon employs an extensive canopy management program with the trellised Zin. This program includes spring suckering, leaf pulling, cane positioning, fruit thinning and bull-caning. Deficit-irrigation was also employed, whereas the vines received just the amount of water such that the vine didn’t begin to shut down. All of this is done for fruit quality.

The Estate-grown grapes were picked between 6:30 am and noon on September 13, 2002 at the Pitts Home Ranch on Olivet Road in Santa Rosa. The grapes were crushed and transferred to a 15-ton closed-top stainless steel fermentor, where the must was pumped over twice daily ensuring proper aeration during fermentation. The wine fermented dry in 13 days and was pressed hard enough to release the heavy sugars found in the very shriveled berries but not hard enough to break the large bitter seeds. The Zin then went to barrel where it was immediately racked off gross lees and splashed for oxygen. This helps reduce the rough tannins. Keeping in line with the winemaker’s fruit-driven vision, mostly neutral oak barrels were used with this lot. Only a small percentage of new Radaux UMX French-American hybrid barrels were used to complex this wine as well as assist in the softening of the tannins. The wine laid in the barrels for twenty full months and was bottled  in July 2004 for a December 2004 release.
 

Tasting Notes

We at Harvest Moon consider ourselves GROWERS before WINEMAKERS. Our inaugural vintage of our Home Ranch Zin is a single-vineyard designate with a truly unique taste. We in the Russian River Valley have the opinion that our fog-drenched summer mornings and hot sunny afternoons is the key to Zinfandel’s soul. Our foggy summer nights help retain the natural acidity found in the grape, which transfers to fresh and juicy flavors on the palate. We believe that we have a very special old clone not found in many vineyards. The combination of lively acids and huge aromatic raspberry/pepper power found in this wine make it both immediately drinkable, yet also one that can lie down for the long haul.

This wine is welcome at any table… 

Accolades

GOLD Medal – 2005 Grand Harvest Awards
93 Points – Wine Enthusiast, August 2005 Issue