Why Happy Canyon?

It’s a place, it’s a wine, and it’s sat­is­fac­tion. Read the wine notes, drink the wine, and take advan­tage of free ship­ping through Feb­ru­ary 15th!

While Pinot Noir makes up 80% of our pro­duc­tion these days, Sauvi­gnon Blanc has always been an impor­tant part of my port­fo­lio. In fact, my love for Sauvi­gnon Blanc started back in 1984 when I was the Wine­maker at Robert Pecota Win­ery in Napa Val­ley. His­tor­i­cally in Cal­i­for­nia, Sauvi­gnon Blanc was a non-descript white wine. With the more worldly per­spec­tive I gained at Pecota, I learned the glory of this vari­etal when grown in appro­pri­ate places and when man­aged in the vine­yard and win­ery. So, very early on I came to appre­ci­ate the char­ac­ter and dis­tinc­tion of Sauvi­gnon Blanc grown in the Loire, ver­sus Bor­deaux, ver­sus New Zealand. Each expres­sion is excit­ing and yet won­der­fully unique, and all wor­thy of atten­tion.

The real rev­e­la­tion came when I dis­cov­ered that, with fruit from the Santa Ynez Val­ley, I could cre­ate these three unique per­son­al­i­ties by vary­ing the vine­yard source and choices in the cel­lar. This was def­i­nitely an artis­tic wine­mak­ing oppor­tu­nity wait­ing to hap­pen. Sauvi­gnon Blanc for the seri­ous palate. So my mis­sion has always been to make Sauvi­gnon Blanc that is beyond the ordi­nary, to make Sauvi­gnon Blanc that has unique expres­sion and tex­tural rewards. My pri­mary focus is to make a wine that is attrac­tive to all dis­crim­i­nat­ing palates. I am look­ing to make a wine with lay­ered fruit with­out being overly fruity and with depth and con­cen­tra­tion with­out being over­bear­ing. And over the years, I have been able to exper­i­ment with choices to imple­ment what has proven to be an ideal com­po­si­tion that sat­is­fies that palate of red wine and white wine drinkers alike.
In my port­fo­lio, this wine is called Happy Canyon.

The Wine­mak­ing Techniques:

1.  A Loire-styled wine, tar­get­ing bal­ance between fruit and texture.

 

2. Mod­est alco­hol lev­els for drinkability.

 

3. Fer­mented 1/3 in Stain­less, 1/3 in new French oak, 1/3 in neu­tral French oak.

 

4. Ripeness is assessed by taste with a desire for riper, more fruit-driven fla­vors (verses greener char­ac­ter­is­tics) and vibrant (but not exces­sive) nat­ural grape acidity.

 

5. The grapes are care­fully farmed so that the vines’ phys­i­o­log­i­cal indi­ca­tors of ripeness coin­cide with max­i­mum ripe fla­vors. (i.e. we max­i­mize the pur­pose of the plant)
    

 

6. Whole clus­ter pressed to min­i­mize harsh tan­nin extrac­tion and to max­i­mize del­i­cacy in the fin­ished wine.
    

 

7. Tight grain Damy bar­rels are the cooper of choice to max­i­mize the ele­gance and to incor­po­rate oak, more for tex­ture and less for aroma.

 

8. Strictly non-malolactic to pre­serve true vari­etal character.

 

9. Aged on the lees in bar­rel for 9 months to max­i­mize body and creamy mid-palate textures.

 

10. Bot­tle aged to mature the wine out of a youth­ful, awk­ward stage into a resolved wine with finesse.

Tags: Fiddlehead, Fiddlehead Cellars, Happy, Happy Canyon, Kathy Joseph, Sauvignon Blanc, Wine, wine tasting

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