Melville

We are pleased to release the first Small Lot Collection Pinot Noirs from 2012: Terraces and Block M.

Our Small Lot Collection wines represent specific and unique interpretations of our Sta. Rita Hills estate. With a wide variety of soil, elevation, sun, wind exposures and clonal diversity available, certain blocks within our vineyards exhibit their own special character and nuance. While we certainly recognize the comprehensive nature and expression of our main estate wines, it is these small distinctions that we consider prized enough to bottle separately and designate as part of our Small Lot Collection. With less than 600 cases of both Terraces and Block M produced in 2012, both wines are in limited supply.

Welcome to Melville Vineyards and Winery! Join us in our Mediterranean-style estate winery where we exclusively produce wines with wine grapes harvested from our own vineyards. Melville Winery and Vineyards is located within the Sta. Rita Hills appellation in Lompoc, California, in Western Santa Ynez Valley.

Located in the center of the Santa Rita Hills appellation, in Santa Barbara County, the estate currently has 85 acres planted to vineyards. The climate here is significantly impacted by its proximity to the ocean, and marked by consistent morning and evening fog and steady afternoon winds. These cooling trends are not only perfectly suited for pinot noir, syrah and chardonnay, but they also serve to prolong the growing season allowing for heightened varietal flavor intensity.

The soil is predominantly Lompoc dune sand, with various blocks possessing clay loam with shallow hard pans of Monterey shale. The vineyard is planted at a spacing of 8’ x 3’ (1,812 vines per acre) and are predominantly oriented on a North/South axis. Vines are all vertically shoot positioned with aggressive canopy management to insure proper ripening and varietal development. The estate currently has eleven clones of pinot noir, ten clones of syrah and five clones of chardonnay all on a variety of low vigor rootstocks. All blocks are fermented in small lots and are isolated through their entire period of elevage to provide us with an on-going exhibition of where we can fine tune the estate so as to arrive at our desired ends.

At the time of harvest, we consider the wines to already be made, and we take every precaution to not interfere with their own natural path of evolution. Compromised fruit is dropped before the time of harvest, though we also sort at picking to eliminate any possibility of marginal fruit entering the winery. The chardonnay is gently whole-cluster pressed at a cool temperature, is cold-settled overnight and is then gravity transferred to French cooperage for fermentation and aging.

The pinot noir and syrah are eitherde-stemmed or transferred directly to small, 1.5 ton fermenters where they are cold-soaked for five to eight days before the initiation of fermentation. Upon the completion of fermentation, the wine will remain in contact with the stems and skins for an additional seven to ten days allowing for the development of long chain, supple tannins. At pressing, the fermenters are dumped directly into the press with the wine then transferred directly into barrel. Upon elevage on gross lees with no O2, the wines are pressure racked once following the waning moon after the Summer solstice, and are bottled two lunar cycles thereafter with neither fining norfiltration.

To nurture the land, vines and fr uit to their purest form. Everything is done in the vineyard, as well as the winery, from a holistic point of view – with an emphasis on purity and oneness. As our winemaking begins in the vineyard, we take every precaution to farm aggressively, yet carefully at the same time. Our concentration is on quality, not quantity. We encourage our vines to produce low-yielding fruit each harvest, to arrive at a more intense concentration within the resulting clusters.

As an estate vineyard, we’re able to control our farming practices in the vineyard throughout the year, from irrigation to soil nutrients to leafing and shoot-thinning practices, enabling us to pull in the quality of fruit needed for premium end results. You’ll often find Chad and Greg, as they roam about the property on their weekly vineyard briefings, trading notes and making necessary adaptations. Vineyard manager and winemaker, working in tandem.