The Black Bottle Winery

The Black Bottle Winery
530 Alameda Del Prado #338
Novato, California
USA 94949
Phone: (415) 806-4625
http://www.blackbottlewinery.com

Contact: Mark Russo
Email: [email protected]

If the coordinates 30’ 17’ North Latitude, 122’14’ West Longitude don’t inspire you, try the visual. You’re on a hilltop, 500 feet above sea level. To the north is a panoramic view of the Napa Valley framed by the Mayacamas Mountains to the west and the Vaca Range to the east. At your feet is a sloping 123 acre ranch with more than 60 acres planted to grapes. This is the renowned location for The Black Bottle Winery, a spectacular place to view the world and one of the premier sites in all of California to grow grapes.

First planted to grapes in 1982, the site has all the attributes to produce the kind of great fruit needed to yield an incredible wine. The soil is shallow (two to two and half feet deep), sorrel red brown in color and laced with volcanic ash and tons of rocks. I mean a ton of rocks. Technically speaking it is called “Aiken Series.” With great drainage and few nutrients, it’s the ideal medium for the noble vitis vinifera.

The weather in this place is odd and wonderful. As with the neighboring Carneros region the growing season is extraordinarily long. The moderating effects of the nearby Bay trigger an earlier bud break, bringing cooler summer temperatures than one finds in the northern sections of the Napa valley.

And at 500 feet above sea level the property sits above the daily fog that regularly blankets the Carneros. The property also has a fortuitous northwestern exposure. This moderates the temperatures in the morning and extends the warmth of the sun late into the afternoon helping to ripen the fruit with out exhausting the vines.

It’s my goal to make complex, intense, seamless wine, wine that blends stellar balance with richness and delicacy—great wine that compliments food and isn’t just a “monument” unto itself. I’m looking for flavor, lots of flavor. Flavor that dances on your tongue.

For me what makes The Black Bottle truly great are very unique microclimates, sustainable farming techniques, rocky soils and superb clones, and daily attention to the winemaking. It makes sense that great wine can only be made with a great vineyard. Our grapes come from exceptional Napa hillside vineyards each with unique climates and distinctive terroirs. That’s why I insist every cluster is hand sorted and evaluated to obtain the best grapes on the vine. Gentle handling, cold soaking and slow complete fermentations allow us to capture all the flavor and structure and complexity each grape lends to our wine.

All the vineyard blocks we use from the Napa Valley are tenaciously sampled by hand. Full barrel aging without the roughness of centrifuge allows the opportunity to sculpt and develop wine that reaches its full potential, creating the nuances which constitute our signature taste.

The wine I’m making is intensely rich, slightly fruit-forward and superbly balanced, but most of all showcases the source of the fruit. We don’t follow a strict “formula”—but it’s not all extemporaneous either. We do march to a certain drumbeat—we want clean, complete fermentations with no residual sugar, rounded resolved tannins and very low VA. This requires careful monitoring of the yeast population and also attention to extraction levels. The ultimate guidebook for making this kind of wine is nature herself. Find the great fruit, treat it gently, taste the fermentations daily and coax the wine in the right direction.

Winemaker: Mark Russo

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