RZN - 'Tres Hermanas' - Chenin Blanc - Santa Barbara, CA - 2022

2022 Chenin Blanc Zero : Zero Made with Organic grapes Tres Hermanas Vineyard (Organic Certified Vineyard) Santa Barbara County The "Lightning" Issue Alc. 11.5 % by vol. The Vintage: Overall we saw a cool and moderate growing season, which ran until September. At the the beginning of September there was a tropical storm near Baja Mexico, and it created a heat/ humidity wave that stuck around for a week. This kept the temp and moisture up higher than normal. Luckily the Chenin was still in the early stages of ripening and was able to withstand the harsh effects. Overall another year with little rain gave us a little more concentration on the fruit, but lower yields. This will be our smallest vintage of Chenin Blanc to date. The Process: The grapes were hand harvested at night and brought to the winery in the early morning of October 3rd. We dump the fruit into the bladder press and run the press cycle for 3 hours. The pressed juice is pumped directly to a steel tank and settles for two days. It is racked to neutral French oak barrels for fermentation. We let the juice naturally ferment over the course of 5-6 weeks. Around the three week mark, we consolidate the barrels and fill them up completely. From here we top every two weeks and let the wine evolve. The wine is then racked super clean to tank and bottled unfined and unfiltered. Bottled January 30, 2022 The Wine: Lemon rind, lychee, lightning bright, mouth watering, silky Additional Notes: Due to the low yields this vintage, only 49 cases were produced True Zero : Zero - nothing added, nothing taken away No Sulfur, No Finning, No Filtering, No Stirring, No Additions, No Nothing, Pure Organic Chenin Blanc Grape Juice About the Label: Based in my roots of skateboarding, I wanted to make a label that was recognizable universally and still had a skateboarding edge. Also having a random high school background in journalism, lets make a Magazine style cover. This way there’s always a consistent theme of logo/ vintage/ alcohol/ etc. listed, but we then get to play with themes/ styles/ colors. And to kick it up a notch, each bottling should have an Issue, as many magazines tend to have some sort of call out to what’s going on in them. For this particular label, I always gravitated to the wine style being bottled lightning, so The “Lightning” Issue stuck pretty quick and easy. Also the use of “Thrasher” Magazine style font for calling out the Chenin was a no brainer given the them of the label. Lastly I’m a big fan of breaking rules, so you using all different fonts for each wording on the label was a must. I’ve been asked by many printers of our products if I was sure I wanted to use this many fonts… and of course the answer is always yes.

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What is RZN (reason)? RZN (reason) is a combo of all my passions loaded up into a wine label... Skateboarding, wine, food, baseball, soccer, photography, wood working, sustainability, you get the idea... Overall I want to share things that I think are fun, interesting and thought provoking. So hopefully my wines spark one, if not all those things! -Nate Axline - Founder/ Juicce Organizer/ Skateboarder