"The wine making goal for the Viognier is to retain the flavors of the freshly picked fruit and not to mask it with oak or other distracting components. We cold fermented it at about 50 degrees for about a month to ensure that the fruit flavors do not burn off. The primary fermentation utilizes the natural wild yeast that comes in on the grapes. The wine does not go through the second (malolactic) fermentation – that way we keep the minerality as well as the crispness of the fruit in the wine. To reduce our energy use, we have replaced the electricity hungry traditional cold stabilization with a new product based on manoproteins – the results are amazing and we feel even more “green” by doing so. The wine was sterile filtered before bottling."