Scholium Project 2014 Steverjan

Skin-contact, old vine, Pinot Grigio fermented in puncheon. 100% whole cluster, of course.

80% of the wine was on skins thirty days and the rest six months! Have no idea if this was by design or serendipitous. Wine is all watermelon and umami. Cool now, no clue where it will go or what it becomes. Color is righteous.

Man, the color on that wine is outrageous! What would Crayola call that - ‘fluorescent Watermelon’??

How about washed out blood orange.

Electric coral… so cool.
I don’t understand where the color comes from. I guess ripe PG has rosy spots on the skins…

Etiology of the color is for Abe to explain, the sunlight thru the window made this photo very much what we saw with our eyes.

Pinot Grigio Kir Royale.

Scholium makes fascinating wines. Often, they seem to have oxidized flavors to me. Did this one strike you that way?

No, this one doesn’t have that profile. Yet.

Reminds me of the Forlorn Hope Pinot Gris Ramato. Made in the same style and absolutely delicious.

Strong resemblances between Forlorn Hope and Scholium, to my palate.

I wonder if it is the wild yeast profile.

Its my understanding that Pinot Noir (Pinot Black) has 3 pigments in the skin, Pinot Gris (Pinot Grey) has 1 pigment in the skin, Pinot Blanc (Pinot White) has no pigments in the skin. All other popular reds have 5 pigments in the skin. Pinot Noirs parents are one white grape and one red grape and thus only carried over some of the pigment. It is also pretty normal to find Pinot Noir that mutates in the vineyard to either of these. I have herd numbers as high as 1 vine per 1000 per year, and as low as 1 vine per 1000 ever few to several years. We definitely have a few in our vineyard that now produce white grapes.

Watching the movie Burgundy last night on amazon prime I noticed some white clusters harvested, loaded and in fermentors. Our guys never pick them, we just eat them.

When you ferment on the skins those pigments go from the skins in to the liquid and you can get varying degrees of color. The first time I saw Pinot Gris arrive at the winery I though it was covered in mold due to the color, though as the truck got closer and I got to see them I was surprised how much color they had.

Glenn,

Brought a bottle of Steverjan to our tasting group dinner last night as an opener. Went well with the cheese/charcuterie, and the color was certainly a topic of interest. About as fluorescent an Orange as I have seen. There were no hard edges, and nice nose with some mineral and complexity on the palate. Some good comments from some who are somewhat skeptical of Scholium wines. Gave it an hour or two of Slow-O and it showed well over several hours. I enjoyed it more while it still had a bit of a chill, while others thought it better as it got to room temperature. In any event, one of the better domestic skin-fermented wines I’ve had.

Cheers!

Steve

There you go using them 50 cent words again Glen…

It’s the study of insects.

I guess Abe is some sort of insect aficionado?

I believe that would be entomology although I don’t rule out the potential for Abe’s interest in insects. His passion for knowledge is legendary.

Oh, right, ‘etiology’ is the study of where words get their origin.

Etiology is a daily use medical word. We use it to mean the attribution of the cause or reason for some symptom or disease. It is at least a $2 word on a wine forum.

One of the saddest realizations of adulthood is I now use the word etiology like 10X more than the word boner.

I knew an orthopedic surgeon who to refer to himself as “The Boner.”

Iatrogenic, nosocomial, and idiopathic are good words, too.

I got all those covered too.

I knew another guy that the staff referred to as their “Chief of Staph” for how so many patients expired after his care.

He thought ‘scrub’ was what you wore, not what you did.

Just spit out some food reading this. Also by this logic (though slightly twisted), boner is a $20 word. I shall now adjust my wine notes accordingly.