California Stars Star Crossed North Coast 2023

$27.00 Sale

Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot

Organic

Sonoma, California

The Cabernet is coming from our own farmed vineyard (Stone Barn Farm Vineyard) in the Sonoma Valley right on the border with Carneros. We farm these grapes organically without any irrigation. You typically see more Pinot and Chardonnay in this area, but we like the cool climate so that we can get good hang time and maturity while preserving good acid and keeping the alcohol low. The soils are deep, well drained alluvial soils, which are well suited to dry farming in this climate.

For vinification we simply destem the grapes and let them ferment in stainless tanks and they are pressed at dryness (in this case 15 days). We then raised the wine in a combination of neutral french 60 gal barrels and 300 gal HDPE flextanks.

The Merlot is coming from Lolonis.  The grapes were treated similarly to the Cabernet Sauvignon, destemmed and fermented til dryness (16 days maceration) and aged in stainless tanks to preserve freshness.

California Stars was born when the *stars aligned* with producers we’ve always admired–Shaunt Oungoulian and Diego Roig of Les Lunes–to collaborate on three cuvées together.  These are Love me Love me Not (skin contact white), Fool Bloom (light chillable red blend), and Star Crossed (Classic California Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot).

Diego and Shaunt recently took us through the blending process and shed some light on their operations at their gorgeous new facility they’ve built in Richmond California (just outside of Berkeley). Richmond, which is a burgeoning winemaking community, is also home to Purity and Subject to Change.  This new cellar is much larger than their previous space (Shaunt’s parents’ basement).  Consequently, they were able to sign vineyard contracts to work with as much quantity and varieties as they wanted to.  There are other newfound conveniences, such as being much closer to the vineyards and having more space for bottling.  All of these allowed Shaunt and Diego to have the availability and ability to make these three amazing wines for us.