Occidental - Freestone Occidental - Pinot Noir 2022
Occidental is located in the town of Bodega in Sonoma, California . It is owned by Steve Kistler , of the famed Kistler Vineyards. Steve Kistler began developing a passion for coastal vineyard wines during his career at Ridge. In 1995 , with Warren Dutton, he planted 1.5 hectares of Pinot Noir on Taylor Lane and named it Occidental Vineyard. In 1999, he purchased the 40-hectare Bodega Headlands property where he planted 8 hectares of Pinot Noir in 2001. More After several purchases and new plantings of Pinot Noir, he founded Occidental in 2011, the new Kistler family estate dedicated to the production of Pinot Noir from the Freestone-Occidental region. The team is still made up of the same people who have worked with Steve since more than thirty years.
Occidental wines are produced from vineyards located on a southwest-facing ridge overlooking the Pacific Ocean, just outside the town of Bodega. This ridge and the surrounding headlands mark the western boundary of the Freestone- Western and are among the coldest and late-ripening sites. All fruit is harvested at night and arrives fresh at the cellar the next morning. The fruit is carefully sorted into bunches before destemming and then into individual berries a second time in the goal of leaving as many whole, uncrushed berries in each fermenter as possible. Each vineyard block is fermented separately to capture as much individual site character as possible. The fruit is intentionally not cold macerated prior to fermentation. Room temperature in the fermentation tanks allows the fruit to warm up gradually; this activates the indigenous yeasts, fermentation begins in 7 to 9 days and ends in less than three weeks. Punching down is only used when necessary to distribute the heat of fermentation, ensuring gentle extraction. Once fermentation is complete, the vats are racked and only the free-run wine is transferred by gravity into François Frères barrels (25 % new) to age in a naturally cool underground cellar. Indigenous malolactic fermentations generally begin around the end of December and end in late spring of the following year. The wine remains unracked until November, when it is transferred directly into the bottling tank and bottled unfined and unfiltered with a minimum level of SO2.
Grape variety: 100% Pinot Noir