Winemaking: Gamay Noir

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Gamay Noir: Cherry and Cherry Alike

Cerise™ is our name for a predominant Gamay noir blend with Pinot noir. Both varietals exhibit a palate of cherry flavors and aromas. "Cherry" in French, Cerise is our tribute to a high fruit, only moderately serious red wine. In Burgundy they do one too, called passetoutgrains, blended close to our normal 80% Gamay noir and 20% Pinot noir, for drinking while waiting for their highly structured Pinots to develop.

Gamay Noir grapes:
big, dark, and lucky

We have made Cerise since 1992 and it is a special wine for some of our longtime customers. Growing Gamay noir since 1985, we have learned a lot about the grape over the years. For one thing, as the variety that makes Beaujolais, it may seem an early ripening red able to produce predictably anywhere and anytime. Not so. Beaujolais is warmer than Burgundy, it ripens later at the same cropload than Pinot noir, carrying abundant acid that takes time to subdue. It also bears heavily if given the chance—we’ve consistently dropped half of the crop on the ground at veraison, yielding anywhere from 2 to 4 tons! This variety on our Ridgecrest site has shown a need for a very good vintage to make exceptional wines, or else exceptional steps from us. The 1995-7 vintages did not muster enough ripening oompf to make great wines, generating enough frustration with us picky types that we were giving one additional vintage before grafting over to Pinot noir. The vines are now 15 years old and at one time constituted the largest planting of the variety in the US, but that didn’t mean they were safe from euthanasia.

They must have good hearing, because they gave us great 1998 and 1999 wines, low in cropload, intense, black cherry fruited, spicy, firm and well structured. Similar to our 1992. We are offering the very limited amount from 1998 (145 cases) at Memorial Day, then shipping what’s left to select markets. It is pegged at a $18 retail price. Some might call it cherry-picking.