2007 J. Lohr Late Harvest White Riesling

The 2007 vintage got off to a late start due to extremely cold weather in January which put our vines into a deep dormancy. White Riesling is typically the last variety to push buds, but the mid-April budbreak was late even for Riesling in the Arroyo Seco. We had good cluster numbers in 2007, but as the cool growing season progressed, we realized that the clusters were going to be lighter, producing a smaller yield than average. The cool, moist summer months created ideal conditions for development of Botrytis (the “Noble Mold”) on our Riesling grapes. By mid-October we saw that we had a sufficient Botrytis to warrant our harvest crew selecting and hand-picking only the most affected clusters for our late harvest White Riesling, giving dried apricot flavors with tantalizingly high acid and over 30° Brix of natural grape sugar.

Vineyard

Our Riesling vineyards lie just east of Cypress Avenue in the heart of our
original Greenfield vineyard plantings, which surround our lone Monterey
pine tree in the Arroyo Seco AVA. A portion of the vines still in this
vineyard were our first White Riesling vines, planted in 1972 by Jerry Lohr.
The remainder were planted in 1995. The soils are largely Chualar loam,
underlain by stones deposited by the Arroyo Seco for over a millennium.
The winds of the Salinas Valley are particularly intense in this area due to
its position at the beginning of an elevated plateau just to the north.

TECHNICAL DATA

Winemaker's Comments

Golden yellow in color, with faint amber hues, the 2007 Late Harvest
White Riesling has botrytised aromas of dried apricots, figs, honey and
orange blossoms with accents of petrol and spearmint. The palate is sweet
and yet tart with 9.6% residual sugar and crisp 3.08 pH.

—Jeff Meier, winemaker

 Price: $25.00 (375ml)

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