Broc Cellars Amore Bianco 2020
Type: Red
Country: USA
Region: California, Mendocino County
Grape Variety: 100% Tocai Friulano
Alcohol Percentage: 12%
Viticulture: Natural Wine | Organic Farming
Terroir: Fox Hill Vineyard holds a special place in the hearts of the people at Broc. They first ventured into Italian varieties with the Badger Nero D’Avola. The vineyard is located between Hopland and Ukiah with soil that is mostly sandstone, rocks, pebbles and quartz.
Ageing: Fermented on the skins in two sandstone jars and direct pressed into one concrete egg and another sandstone jar. The juice on the skins in the sandstone jars are fermented and aged until January and basket pressed. The juice went back into the sandstone jars to age for a few more months. The wine was fermented using only native yeasts, no sulfur was added during fermentation or at bottling, and is left unfiltered showing its natural texture. It was aged for a total of 9 months.
Color: Pale yellow
Nose: Hints of grapefruit, lemon oil, tarragon, basil and sea salt
Palate: The palate is juicy and textured, with hints of lemons, almonds over a herbaceous, savoury body and slightly bitter finish
About the Winery:
After growing up in Nebraska and working in Seattle, Chris Brockway arrived in California to study winemaking. Following a textbook education at UC Davis and Fresno State, Chris’s experience of drinking and enjoying more low-intervention wines persuaded him to take a somewhat different path to most of his classmates. In 2002, he began working at an urban winery in Oakland, before leaving in 2006 to set up his own label from a small industrial unit in Berkeley. Today he runs his operation from a bigger premise around the corner, but the focus remains producing wines from organic or biodynamic fruit in a decidedly hands-off fashion – natural ferments and no additions.
Chris is an open-minded and innovative winemaker and his winery reflects this, packed from floor to ceiling with the innumerable projects that he has on the go at any one time. Terracotta fermentation vessels (based loosely on amphorae) full of Nero d’Avola vie for space with sealed tanks of Carignan going through carbonic maceration and a lineup of majestic open-top wood fermenters.
At Broc Cellars, all of their wines are made using spontaneous fermentation, a process that means they only use native yeasts and bacteria that exist on the grapes in order to make wine. They don’t add anything – this includes nutrients, yeast, bacteria, enzymes, tannins or other popular fermentation agents. Sulphur is a naturally occurring element in all wine, the amount found can vary. They add little to no S02, depending on the wine and style. The grapes that they work with are grown without using synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or fertilizers.
“Our goal in making wine is to bring out the natural expression of the grape. We decide on a wine by wine basis how we want to do that. We have more freedom now to make the choice not to add Sulphur. There is a bigger market for us to go in the direction we want to go. To counter that we are doing more to ensure our vineyards are using the farming practices we support. We’re also committed to detailing exactly what decisions we make during the course of our winemaking process.” – Chris Brockway
