West of Temperance

A great wine springs from love, humility and communion with the ethereal. Its primary purpose is to create pleasure.

As winemakers, we are deeply interested in concepts such as complexity, terroir, aromas, balance, extraction, mouth feel, flavor, etc. We know firsthand patience is an essential tool for making outstanding wine. West of Temperance strives to capture these compelling factors as part of our winemaking process.

Our wines strive to stand alone as complete wines (complexity, depth, length, structure, taste, aroma profile) and offer a certain unique something that is magical, singular to that place. Our vineyard designate wines have intriguing aroma profiles as a result of place and provide a balanced texture and complexity to deliver pleasure, quality and distinction.

As part of our winemaking process, we must first let the vineyard site speak to us. We strive to understand and identify the specific terroir unique to that singular place while at the same time exposing the unique characteristics of each varietal. What gives a wine its distinction? What makes it assertive or coy? We like to consider many of these related factors as part of making a pleasurable, balanced wine.

After we have identified our unique vineyard sites, we move into winemaking specifics, we employ numerous winemaking techniques. For example, we utilize extended maceration (letting grapes sit on skins after primary fermentation is complete), in some cases, for up to two months before pressing off. The main reason behind this technique is for mouth feel, richness, texture and ageability. We feel texture on the palate is a very important part of what we do. Specific barrel selection and barrel aging is a big part of what we do as well. Because we want the wines to speak to the specific vineyard site and varietal, it is rare that we employ new oak, rather, we prefer to use neutral oak barrels which we feel provide better insight, clarity and are more revealing of the characteristics of each individual wine.

Depending on what the vintage gives us, we also employ a combination of winemaking techniques. Extended lees contact, lees stirring, ambient yeast fermentations, low sulfur additions, no acid additions, no water additions, racking only prior to bottling, stem inclusion for certain lots, carbonic maceration for certain lots, and many more depending on what is needed.

Our experience tells us winemaking is the result of the unique symbiotic relationship between man and nature. As we strive to master the intricacies of that complex relationship, we are ultimately striving to make wines that not only deeply please our own palates but those of our customers as well.

You can learn more about our current offerings, view our order form and sign up for our mailing list at http://westoftemperance.com also be sure to check out our Facebook page Facebook where you can see pictures, read reviews and more.

This is our second BerserkerDay and we could not be more pleased to be participating once again. We have grown a lot since last year and this time around, we have a much larger offering and several new wines to present you with. We will be offering several rare Italian varietals, Petite Sirah (old vine), Napa Valley Merlot and a few more. We look forward to offering special packages uniquely created for the WineBerserkers community!

I had the pleasure of tasting some of your wines at the Garagiste Festival in Solvang last year. I’m looking forward to seeing what will be on offer!

Thank you Tyler we remember meeting you in Solvang last year and tasting through our wines together… We appreciate your ongoing interest we are looking forward to presenting our offer and being in touch with you!

Aglianico, very interesting.

Thank you, Michael. Yes, we are very interested in Aglianico as well and have been working with the varietal for quite some time now…almost 10 years!

How does your Aglianico compare to the Italian counterpart? I love them, but find the Italian version needs time.

I have my order form all ready as soon as Todd let’s us order from you tomorrow.

Attaboy!

We strive to make our Aglianico’s approachable young while at the same time will benefit with aging and a few more years in the bottle. Our Aglianico’s spend at least 6 months and up to 2 years in bottle before release.

We find longer maceration times and skin contact add to the softening of the heavy tannic structure of this classically tannic varietal. Longer Élevage` and some percentage of whole cluster fermentations (stem inclusion) also adds to the early approachability of the wines. Having recently consumed library Aglianico’s (2009 and 2010) we are continuously reminded as to how beautifully and gracefully these wines can age.

We suggest giving the wines a lot of air and if possible to decant the wine before drinking.

Can’t wait to try them.

Excellent Michael we look forward to helping you!