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Mercer Family Vineyards Reserve Heritage Blend

Mercer Family Vineyards Reserve Heritage Blend

This blend shows a beautiful nose of blackberry preserves and chocolate covered cherries with notes of warm baking spices and sweet caramel. The ripe fruit combined with sleek tannins create a wine that is broad and powerful yet elegant. The ripe flavors in the mouth lead into a soft, lingering mocha finish with a touch of bright acidity that leaves you wanting more.

Vineyard Sourcing

The fruit for this wine is grown at our acclaimed Estate vineyards in the Horse Heaven Hills. The fruit is exposed to dappled sunlight, allowing for uniform ripening and flavor development. Well balanced crop levels have allowed us to create wines with great depth and concentration.

Growing Season

The 2017 vintage started in early September, which is what we typically expect. The past 4-5 years have brought grapes in as early as the middle of August. The warm days and cool nights of September gave us ample fruit flavor development balanced with bright acidity. Some cold events in mid-October definitely put the pressure on to get fruit off the vines. Despite the cool spell, our fruit had plenty of time to ripen, developing intense flavors and dusty tannins.

Winemaking

These grapes were double sorted, first in the vineyard with the selective harvest on our Pellenc harvesters, then again at the winery on our sorting table. The fruit was not crushed in order to preserve as much whole-berry as possible. At the winery, individual lots were fermented in stainless steel tanks. Twice daily pumpovers allowed gentle extraction of color and tannins. After draining the wine and pressing the skins, the wine was racked to a blend of French and American oak barrels for malolactic fermentation. The wine was aged in barrel for 18 months before being blended together for bottling

Appellation: Horse Heaven Hills
Blend:
  • Syrah 53% 53%
  • Merlot 41% 41%
  • Malbec 6% 6%
Alcohol: 13.9%
T.A.:
0.46g/100ml
pH: 3.94