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June 2018 WINES&VINES 53 WINEMAKING While he keeps experimenting with ex- tended maceration, McClellan said he contin- ues to prefer a standard extraction of two weeks at the most. "I keep trying them and keep saying we can do better with just normal skin contact of 10 to 14 days," he said. He also filters prior to bottling to ensure a reliable product. Less intervention in the cellar at $78 Likely no one in the audience was surprised that the highest-priced Cabernet in the session came from Napa Valley, but at $78 per bottle the 2014 Lede Family Wines Cabernet Sauvi- gnon is almost a bargain when compared to other Napa Cabs. Discussing the wine were vice president and general manager Remi Cohen and viticulturist Allison Cellini, who said the wine came from two estate vineyards that comprise 56 small lots from nearly 60 acres. Cohen described the Stag's Leap district blend as "really the heart and soul of our production." In the vineyard designed by David Abreu, the vines are trained to low head-height verti- cal shoot positioning at 3-feet vine spacing and 5 to 6-feet row spacing. Cellini said the vine- yards demand precision and she's very lucky to work with an in-house crew that has been tending them for nearly five years. She said she conducts several canopy adjustments passes based on quality to achieve about 12 to 14 clusters per vine for 2 to 3 tons per acre. The grapes are harvested into the much-loved little yellow lug boxes, known as FYBs, and brought to the winery. Cellini said she's able to make "micro deci- sions" in the vineyard and farm with such precision because her vineyard workers know the estate so well. "The majority of the people on this crew have been at our site for four or five years so having the same people year after year really allows us the ability to fine tune and get to know the vineyard," she said. When asked about farming costs, Cohen said at the low it probably came to $12,000 to $14,000 per acre. Cohen said had winemaker Christopher Tynan sat on the panel he likely would have said everything is done in the vineyard, and while she said there is a minimalist strategy in the cellar that belies an incredible amount of work. "On the other hand we know that he does take an incredible amount of meticulous care and attention in what he does in the win- ery," she said. At the crush pad, the grapes are dumped onto a Bucher Vaslin conveyor for a hand sort- ing that is followed by an optical sorting from a Pellenc machine. She said the winery made the smart move to lease a Pellenc sorter in 2011, so it was easy to recently upgrade to the company's latest machine. Sorted berries are dropped into tanks with a unique hoisting system that Cohen said can move about 1.5 tons of whole berries. A long cold soak of up to a week is followed by fer- mentation managed with a few pumpovers per day. The winery uses truncated, stainless steel tanks to help keep the cap submerged. One a lot is in the tank it will stay there for up to 40 days of maceration and is tasted daily to evalu- ate mouthfeel and tannin development. All of the lots stay separate into barrel, where they also rest on the lees through the entire elevage that can last more than 20 months. The extended time in the tank and barrel as well as the myriad lots help Cohen and the rest of the winemaking team make the best final blend possible. "What we like about doing this is that we feel the heavy lees of the wine protects the wine and flushes out the wine," she said. "Secondly it gives us the opportunity by keeping all the lots separate — which is a lot more work, topping each individual lot and maintaining each individual lot — but we get to watch the lot mature," she said. "We have that flexibility all the way up to bottling." Remi Cohen, Lede Family Wines " What we like about doing this is that we feel the heavy lees of the wine protects the wine and flushes out the wine." —Remi Cohen