2023 “Apricot Blanc” Sparkling Grape & Apricot Wine

Have you ever sniffed a Chardonnay and found the sweet smells of ripe apricots and stone fruit? 

Well, we have and thought, what would happen if we actually fermented some apricots and blended them with fresh Chardonnay from our Poseidon Vineyard? We joined up with our friends at Frog Hollow Farms to source organic apricots at the peak of ripeness to ferment alongside some of our Chardonnay. Then blended them and bottled slightly sweet to finish fermenting in bottle for a natural fizz. OMG, you’re gonna love it.  

Technical notes: We bought one half of a ton of organically farmed Goldensweet apricots from legendary farmers, Frog Hollow Farms, in Brentwood California in early July 2023. The fruit was brought to the cellar where we pitted the apricots and moved them into a fermentation vessel and we added some wine yeast. With daily punch downs as we do with our wine production, the fermentation lasted about ten days. At which time we pressed the apricots and allowed the juice to settle. We then moved the completely dry “apricot wine” into stainless steel drums with a small sulfur addition, where they rested until our grape harvest began a few months later. 

The second piece of this puzzle came into the cellar mid-September, Chardonnay from our own Poseidon Vineyard in the world-famous Napa Carneros wine region. We whole-cluster pressed some of our clone 4 Chardonnay and fermented it slowly until almost dryness in a stainless steel tank. We then blended the two lots together in a fifty/fifty blend, the Chardonnay still having a small amount of residual sugar remaining. So, when we bottled the concoction under crown caps, the fermentation would finish in bottle to make this wine spritzy and alive.  

Casey Graybehl, Winemaker