Âmevive - 'Périphérie' - Old Vine Field Blend - Ibarra-Young Vineyard, Los Olivos, CA - 2022

Estate grown, Ibarra Young Vineyard - Los Olivos District AVA.

These vines are part of the original plantation by Charlotte Young in 1971. 2021 vintage marks these vine’s 50th harvest. This wine is selected from the far western side of the property where the vines absorb the water from the neighboring property and grow incredibly vigorous. Where the rest of the old vines have reasonable 3ft shoots, and moderately sized clusters, the “peripherie” row has sometimes 10ft long canes sprawling onto the floor and often football sized clusters. It didn’t make sense to put this anomaly section into the block designate wines. So, with an ode to the traditional way of harvesting and in an effort to make a fresh wine out of a serious vineyard, I made a co-fermented field blend.

Peripherie was harvested on a single morning. The ratio of each grape is not a science, it directly correlates to the amount of vines in each row working up the western side of the property. The Marsanne, Syrah, and Mourvedre were harvested into the same picking bins and brought to the cellar to be destemmed into open top barrels. After its native fermentation commenced, this wine was made with minimal extraction with gentle love touches and pour overs. Peripherie was sent to press after a little more than 2 weeks on its skins. This wine aged for 6 months ⅓ in stainless and 3/4 in neutral French oak before bottling unfined and unfiltered in March of 2022.

This is a fresh but serious expression of Ibarra-Young Vineyard. Possibly its truest representation as it encompasses all three of the original blocks on the property. This wine has become quite special to me!

You can seek out glimpses of all three varieties in this wine. Delicate yet fairly formal. A wild one like a melange of freshly harvested fruits from the garden, peeled and prepped for your seasonal jam making. Light, alive, easy, crushable

Art: The weasel on the front was painted by my perfect mother, Eileen Anderson. The native Mustela frenata, the long-tailed weasel, is a cheeky little critter on this cheeky little wine. We always get excited to see them around springtime in the vineyard. They are veracious hunters and help manage the gopher population in the vineyard. The beneficial insects on the back label are painted by me. These are some of the invertebrates we are looking for in the vineyard to maintain a healthy pest population naturally.

12.5% ABV
Ingredients: beyond-organic grapes, 26ppm total SO2
109 cases produced