Navarro Pinot Noir

For almost forty years Navarro has been producing Anderson Valley Pinot Noir wine and two decades ago we set out to dramatically increase our estate Pinot vineyard acreage. Given Navarro's early winemaking experience with several Pinot clones, each one with a different flavor profile, we felt pretty confident about clonal selection. The biggest gap in our knowledge concerned newly available rootstocks. How would they perform in Philo? We decided to plant our newer fields with a selection of different rootstocks as well as various clones, the shoots that are grafted on to the roots. After twenty vintages of making wine from various clone/rootstock combinations, it's our observation that there is as much flavor profile difference due to the rootstock choice as the clonal selection. One rootstock we've used is Rupestris, which has a deep tap root. We've also planted using Riparia Gloire, whose roots spread more horizontally. It's our guess that the rootstocks are getting nutrients from different soil strata, which alters the wines' eventual taste. This bottling is a complex cuvée, produced from nine separate vineyard blocks, planted to five distinct clones, on five different rootstocks.