2021 Maréchal Foch - Signature

2021 MARÉCHAL FOCH - SIGNATURE

Tasting Notes:
The cool nights and long summers of the Willamette Valley are perfectly suited for this French-American hybrid. This distinctive, medium bodied wine marries flavors of pomegranate, roasted tomato, and black pepper with aromas of currant, blueberry and sweet mesquite. Lower acidity makes make it a nice match with rich pasta dishes and we love the deep earthy character with grilled or roasted meats. 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:
The fruit was gently de-stemmed by a Euro Select into 1.5-ton fermenters leaving a high whole berry content. After two days of cold soak and gentle pump-overs, inoculation was done with a variety of yeasts designed to increase complexity and mouth-feel. Fermentations were pumped over once a day with light punch downs as needed for nine to eleven days with temperatures peaking around 86°F. The wine was racked via gravity to settling tanks keeping the lots separate. The skins were shoveled into the press and pressed creating a ‘press’ settling tank. Three days later the wine was racked to barrel and inoculated for malo-lactic. After 10 months in American oak barrels the wines were racked to tank for blending. The wine was cold stabilized, filtered and bottled in September 2022.

Harvest Notes:
The warm dry winter of 2021 led to an early bud break in some varietals while others were delayed by the cooler spring that followed.  When summer finally got underway the warm and dry weather produced beautiful, clean fruit.  The heat dome that hit us at the end of June had us on tenterhooks briefly but soon the weather reverted into a more traditional Oregon summer and those fears were allayed.  Late September and early October were perfect, cool and dry, allowing us to choose picking dates based on the state of the fruit, not the weather.  We are excited about the balanced fruit that came in as a result and look forward to sharing our wines with you.

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