Grapes: Red + White grapes co-fermented
Region: Willamette Valley, Oregon
Vintage: 2023
Viticulture: Organic
Soils: Wind-blown Loess + Marine Sediment + Volcanic
Vinification: Wholecluster carbonic fermentation in sealed tanks for 10-21 days. The grapes are then pressed and finished in french oak barrels
Aging: 5 months
Fining or Filtering: None
Sulfur: None added
Notes from the Importer: Fossil & Fawn started out as a completely reasonable idea in the late summer of 2011, and quickly spiraled into a much more complex, frustrating, terrifying, and unbelievably rewarding venture. They began with the notion of making a small amount of wine from their family vineyard as a single-site bottling, simply because no one else had done so before. The plan was to have a nice example to show to potential buyers of the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris grown there. Somewhere along the line they figured that for all the effort, they might as well make it an official wine label. After a series of fits and starts (mostly fits), Fossil & Fawn was born proper as a wine label, nearly two years after they had that very reasonable idea.
They aren't too interested in bold manifestos or style declarations—their goal is to make wines that they like. They’ve found that the kind of wines they like, and thus the wines they make, are executed with a natural approach that allows the vineyard to do the talking. That means instead of buying yeast, they culture it from the vineyard itself, with no other additives or enzymes. It also means as-little-as-necessary sulfur additions and aging all of our wines in barrels, with very little new oak. The minimalist, natural approach is a nice way of saying they do things the hard way, by-hand. The upside is that they end up with wines that they like. Wines that have acidity, structure, and balance that will brilliantly compliment dinner tonight, or be a worthy reward for patience after a few years in the cellar.
