Fall 2022 Wine-Share
The Fall share is here!
This is one of the best ever, just in time for celebratory drinking through the holidays and beyond. We have three 2019 vintage wines that we aged in bottle for longer than usual, and all three are better for it. As promised, we’ve reprised our 2018 sparkling rosé, because as good as bubbles are the rest of the year, they are mandatory in the coming weeks.
The 2019s are Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc and Petit Manseng. All three show the depth and ripeness of the vintage and are some of the best wines we have produced to date. Your second bottle of our first release of traditional method sparkling wine, a very pale, very dry 2018 sparkling rosé is drinking beautifully six months after disgorging. We think you’ll like it even more than your first bottle from the Spring share.
Finally, we teased in our last share letter that we had exciting news, and now we can finally share it. Tim and Ben built a winery in Waynesboro! They teamed up with a small group of partners to start up a company called Common Wealth Crush (CWC) in the historic Virginia Metalcrafters building on the city’s east side. The project’s vision is a cooperative space that houses and incubates the next generation of Virginia winemakers, and Midland brought our production to CWC for the inaugural vintage.
Because Common Wealth Crush is located in the center of our local delivery area, we will be moving all shares that were historically local deliveries to pickup at the new winery. If you are local but unable to get to us, you can opt for flat rate shipping via UPS.
Thank you, as always, for your support,
The Jordan Family
Contents in the Fall 2024 wine-share2019 Chardonnay, Mount Airy, Shenandoah Valley
Barrel fermented without inoculation in 3rd use, 500L French oak, full malo and unfiltered. This wine’s density is the result of a warm and dry vintage, and the richness gave us a reason to age the wine in bottle for almost two years before release. Before the bottle it was aged on its lees for 16 months, the final five in stainless steel barrels. The result is savory orchard fruit punctuated with beeswax and fresh baking bread. There is a reductive, mineral character that holds the flesh of the wine and shapes it, making for a play of texture and acidity.
2019 Petit Manseng, Mount Airy, Shenandoah Valley
After our two different treatments on the 2018, we decided that this wine could shine without any added SO2, or anything else for that matter: nothing added or taken away. Our take on Petit Manseng is unique in that we do full malolactic, age the wine on the lees for 31 months, and bottle unfiltered. The fermentation spanned 20 months, where the yeast populations grew and declined over the course of three distinct periods. This has ample acidity and richness and is marked by long fermentation and extended lees contact, with a yeasty, baked bread character.
2019 Cabernet Franc, Mount Airy, Shenandoah Valley
Mount Airy is a rocky, low vigor vineyard site, and combined with the fact we leave the native flora to grow undervine, we farm lower yields than most folks in the state. The result is the grapes ripen quickly making for wines that are concentrated, yet fresh. We fermented with 25% whole cluster, with ambient yeasts and bottled without filtration. Herbs and smoked tea accentuate the dark fruit and tactile structure.
2018 Brut “Zero” Sparkling Rosé, Mount Airy, Shenandoah Valley
You may have noticed how we like to ferment our Cabernet Franc and Blaufränkisch together. In 2018, we tried this with the base wine for our sparkling rosé, and we’re definitely doing it again! The wine is pale in color from long lees aging both in barrel (18 months) and in bottle (24 months), which matches the minerality and precision of this traditional method sparkling wine. This is the same bottling you received in the Spring, because we couldn’t decide whether we wanted you to have it in spring or for the holidays. This wine was bottled with zero dosage, aka no added sugar to temper acidity, so it is dry-dry.
📸 Mollie McLaughlin, CWC Harvest Associate and Wine-Share member
