2018 "Nudge" Maréchal Foch

2018 'Nudge' MARÉCHAL FOCH DESSERT WINE - 500ml

Tasting Notes:
A heartwarming wine named for my desire to “Nudge” myself and others into sharing life’s enjoyment. With flavors of dried plum, molasses and pipe tobacco this lucious dessert wine should be enjoyed with your favorite people. Chocolate loves Nudge and the feeling is mutual. Curl up by the fire with a few of your close friends and share a glass of Nudge with your favorite chocolate confection.

Maréchal Foch (MAHR-shahl FOHSH) is named after the WWI Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch.  An easy way to remember how to pronounce it is that Maréchal sounds like marshal spoken with flair and Foch rhymes with brioche or gauche.

Winemaking Notes:
In the true spirit of Nudge the grapes for this wine were picked by family and friends in early October.  After a few days of cold soak the grapes were inoculated and fermentation continued normally until locally distilled grape spirits were added to stop the fermentation retaining naturally occurring grape sugars to provide sweetness to the finished wine.  The fermenter was pressed off and allowed to settle a few days before being racked to barrel.  In September, the barrels were racked again and moved to a cooler room for aging. In keeping with a ruby-style port, the barrels were topped regularly and allowed to integrate slowly.  In September 2021, we finally decided Nudge was ready for the bottle and the wine was racked to tank, filtered and bottled.   Again, in the spirit of Nudge, we had to borrow a neighbor’s bottling line to get the job done.  Thank you to Tom and Elliot.

Harvest Notes:
The 2018 growing season started as one of the warmest and driest on record raising concerns that we might have a repeat of our last few hot years but thankfully there were no major heat spikes through the later part of the summer and peak grape ripening season. The cool autumn allowed us to let fruit hang developing flavor complexity while still retaining acidity. Our harvest started on October 4th with the Maréchal Foch and finished October 22nd with the Muscat Ottonel.

Our winery and our estate vineyard, Dunn Forest, are LIVE certified sustainable and Salmon Safe. The vineyard is hand cultivated allowing us to respond to individual vine needs.