Iron Horse Vineyards
2008 Wedding Cuvee
Pinot Noir
Russian River Valley
Mission Briefing
Cupid's Bubbles
Very highly recommended, today’s sparkling wine from our old friends at Iron Horse Vineyards is an elegant and exciting bubbly that is just perfect for your most romantic Valentine’s Day celebrations.
Delicious and elegant with a lovely, soft mousse, natural flavors and heady aromatics this sparkling wine caused a real stir at out recent tasting. We blind-tasted today’s sparkler against a $100 bubbly, recently. Our tasting panel was unanimous in its choice of today’s wine as the easy winner.
A perfect cocktail or appetizer bubbly, this wine has the longest finish we’ve ever experienced in a sparkling wine. Enjoy this wine now or stock some away for the next several years.
Serve with with a wide range of lighter foods or appetizers. We think that cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches would be perfect. Just be sure to cut them into hearts shapes before serving them!
Tasting Profile
| Look: | Very pretty in the glass, with pale pink or slightly coppery hues, depending upon the light. An energetic, steady stream of small bubbles continue to cascade upward for the duration of your drinking experience. |
|---|---|
| Smell: | Light wild strawberry, honeycrisp apple, sublte guave, and subtle sweet white flowers present at the front of the palate. Toward the rear, subtle talc powder and subtle wild fennel provide an intriguing and delicious backing. |
| Taste: | Soft mousse blooms in the palate, in a billowing burst of medium bubbles, driving flavors of honey, soft of berry fruit, slightly underripe blackberry, raw almonds, young alpine strawberry, golden raspberry, guava, and subtle creamed honey. |
| Finish: | The longest we have ever experience with a sparkling wine, the flavors linger on and on - seemingly forever - providing all over the palate coverage. |
| Pairing: |
What the Winery Says
This is Iron Horse’s Blanc de Noirs, made from predominantly Pinot Noir. It has a beautiful rose color. Rich and creamy, like pure strawberries and cream, this is without doubt the most romantic of our Sparklings. It is dangerously easy to drink. A favorite for many, Iron Horse is probably best known for this cuvee.
Food Pairing
The vibrant, rich qulaities make our wedding Cuvee the perfect partner to a range of dishes. A butter lettuce salad with bacon, gorgonzola and red apple, poached salmon with summer squash and hollandaise or a red and green peppercorn cursted pork tenderloin with fresh mint.
Accolades
Rated 92 points in Wine Spectator and #2 American Sprakling Wine in the New York Tmes. The Wine Advocate’s Robert Parker and Wine Enthusiast awarded the previous vintage 91 points.The 2005 vintage was a finalist for Food & Wine Magazine’s American Wine Awards. The 2004 came in “best of tasting” of American Sparkling Wines in the Wall Street Journal.
Total production
3,600 cases
About the Winery
Iron Horse is one of Sonoma County’s most beautiful, small, independent, estate, family owned wineries located in cool, foggy Green Valley. A pioneer in the Green Valley appellation within the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County, the Iron Horse family is building a legacy of prestige wines.
Iron Horse is renowned for its Sparkling Wines, which have been served at the White House for five consecutive Presidential Administrations, beginning with the historic Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings ending the Cold War.
Winemaker David Munksgard
David Munksgard is an enologist, a graduate of the enology/viticulture program at California State University, Fresno. He joined the extended family in 1996, bringing with him 16 years of experience in producing both sparkling and still wine in California’s Russian River Valley and New York’s Finger Lakes region.
David evolves with the vineyards and the wines. “Our goal here is to make better wines each year. That really keeps you on your toes, forcing you to re-think everything. Nothing is sacred; nothing is cast in stone.”
Believing that great wines start with great grapes, David works closely with the vineyard team. His winemaking decisions are made as the grapes come into fruition. The first, and most important, is when and where to harvest on the estate.
He says, “I’m doing everything I’ve always wanted to do. I’m working with estate-grown grapes; I’m making still and sparkling wines; I’m working for and with some very fine people, all of whom are driven by one single goal - to make wonderful wines that we can all be proud of.“
Summing up his feelings about winemaking, David concludes, “For those of us fortunate enough to be making wine, it is not that we should be winemakers, we simply MUST be winemakers. Nothing else will satisfy that need to craft; to imprint onto and into our wines what we feel and see when we walk the vineyard and dream of what it might be.”
Vineyard Notes
Iron Horse is at the heart of Green Valley, 13 miles from the Pacific as the crow flies. There are approximately 160 acres in vine - planted exclusively to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir - with gentle, rolling hills, and a spectacular view from the winery clear across Sonoma County to Mount St. Helena. The predominant soil-type is called “Goldridge”, a sandy loam that has excellent drainage and is perfectly balanced, making it the most coveted for growing Pinot Noir.
We practice “precision viticulture” (aka “micro-farming”) under the guidance of leading expert, Daniel Roberts, PhD a/k/a “Dr. Dirt”. The estate is divided into 39 blocks, farmed individually, harvested separately and then each vinified as a ‘single vineyard’. Each has been planted with site specific root-stock and clone selections. All pruning, canopy management, irrigation, and cover crop decisions are determined on a block-by-block (and sometimes even vine-by-vine) basis, considering both the vintage and the long-term needs of the land.
Sustainable Farming Practices
Iron Horse is our business and our home. Three generations live on the property. In the vineyards, the winery, the gardens, our lifestyle and community life, we strive to put back more than we take out. Anyone who comes to Iron Horse can see and feel our love of the land.
For erosion control, we seed the hills with cover crop. We have let the creek beds revert to their natural state to support integrated pest management. We chop and mulch our grape prunings into the soil.
We irrigate and frost protect with advanced treated wastewater from neighboring Forestville, recycled water from the winery and accumulated rain water. Green Valley Creek, which runs across the property, is now being restocked by California Fish & Game with steelhead trout.
We adhere to the UC Davis definition of sustainable farming, a holistic effort to protect and nurture the environment, our community and all natural resources.