Las Jaras, Slipper Sippers Nouveau 2025

80% Zinfandel, 20% Petit Sirah 

A Nouveau is born! Nouveau is the name given to the first wine of the vintage. The style originated out of Beaujolais, just south of Burgundy where they make wines from Gamay Noir using the technique carbonic maceration. In carbonic maceration, open top tanks that have been inertized with carbon dioxide are filled with whole cluster grapes and then sealed for a number of days. Pioneering wine chemist and natural winemaker Jules Chauvet employed the technique in the mid 20st century to make light, fruity and delicious wines. This is essentially how we made this wine!

Zinfandel from Cherryhouse in Lodi Mokelumne River. Petite Sirah from Gary Venturi in Mendocino. The pick dates for this wine were between August 26th and September 8th. The Zinfandel was broken into three pieces: one was carbonic, one was destemmed, and one was 50% “reverse saignée”. After 10 days of carbonic maceration at about 55F, we warmed up the tanks and gave them a daily pumpover for two days to get a bit more color and a cleaner ferment. After this period we pressed the grapes lightly and added 10ppm SO2, and resumed fermentation in a warm tank. Once dry,
we stored the wine cool for a number of weeks and got quite good settling and clarity. The destemmed ferment followed a standard winemaking method and made a juicy wine with a bit of structure. The reverse saignée lot was fermented with 50% crushed grapes and 50% pressed juice and came out lithe and super juicy. The Petite Sirah was fermented with a 80% and 70% reverse saignée; meaning we direct pressed 70% on one tank and 80% on the other and the remainder was a small amount of destemmed grapes. A week before bottling we racked the tank and added 20ppm SO2 to protect from any oxygen the wine picked up during bottling.