Style

Boisseau Red 2017 exhibits crunchy red fruits (red currants and cherries), fall leaves, and and freshness. The nose is complex with pomegranate and sassafras notes. The palate has red fruits along with herbal notes of thyme and green olives. There is a fresh acidity on the finish. Tannins are restrained.

Food pairings

This is a great vegetarian wine. Tuscan style white beans with thyme, pasta with sautéed sage leaves, marinated portobello mushrooms. An herb crusted pork loin would also work well with this wine.

Vineyard

Boisseau Vineyard, Warren Co. is located on a bluff above Front Royal in the Shenandoah Valley at an elevation of 600 feet. The vineyard is west facing on light, deep, well drained loam soils. Most of the vines were planted in 2000. The Cabernet Sauvignon vines were planted in 2006. All are trained on cordon/VSP trellising.

Vintage

Flowering began a week early under fair skies. Fruit set was above average for most varieties. The rest of June and all of July was very dry. Shoot growth was less than normal with very little hedging needed. Young vines and less water retentive soils showed drought stress.

We needed rain, but not the 3.5 inches that fell over a few hours on August 11. Although we saw some berry swelling, the vines did not restart vegetative growth. The rest of August was uneventful allowing clusters to lose some compactness.

A forecast can sometimes become confused with reality. The beginning of harvest is best remembered by the threats of Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Jose. They were no shows, with little affect on quality. But the rains never happened. September was warm and dry setting the stage for one of the best red grape harvests in the 30 years of Linden’s history. Reds came in with balanced sugar, flavor, acid and skin tannins. The only potential downside was slightly under-ripe seeds, but we did not taste any green tannins during fermentation. 2017 reds are powerful and ripe, but have freshness rather than heaviness. These will be wines to age. Harvest was September 19 through 29, 2017.

Winemaking

TSaignée was used judiciously, usually in the 5 to 10% range for fear of over emphasizing tannins. Extractions were moderate with more focus on early timing of pump overs and later punch downs. Fermentation temperatures were kept slightly cooler than normal. Post fermentation maceration temperatures and lengths were average in length.

The wine was aged in new (30%) and slightly used French oak barrels for 22 months. Bottled August of 2019. 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Petit Verdot, 20% Merlot and 6% Cabernet Franc. 13.8% alc. Drink through 2027. 2,110 bottles produced.

Linden Vineyards / Our Wines / 2017 Vintage | 2017 Boisseau Red