What is Reserve wine
06/20/2018
What is Reserve wine?
The idea behind reserve wines most likely started in the cellar when winemakers would hold back or ‘reserve’ some of their wine from a particularly productive and good tasting vintage. . The wine they chose to select and hold as reserve may have come from grapes grown in an area of the vineyard the vintner considered more special than others, or out of certain barrels that seemed to be impacting the wine in different and more interesting ways. These wines would then be aged a bit longer and would emerge often tasting richer and more opulent than the regular release. Today, the implication of a reserve wine is that it’s a higher quality wine that has been aged longer. In fact, you’ll find most wineries who use the term really do put their best product into their reserve wines. In our case, our Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is 100% free-run (unpressed) juice. At first racking which is about 4 months into the barrel aging, we taste through all the free-run barrels and select the ones that stand out from the rest with the most interesting and full flavors. We separate that wine from the rest and age it in new oak barrels for another 18 months. Thus we have ‘reserved’ the best of the best. Cheers!
Post By:
Allison VanArnam