Sans Soufre Ajoute John Sebastiano Syrah & Grenache

At The Ojai Vineyard, we were celebrating the 2018 vintage before bud-break, as Winter delivered rain like our region had not seen in years. The storms brought truly cold weather, too, so the vines got a nice long dormancy. Bud-break happened around late March / early April. Spring was dominated by cool, cloudy weather with sunshine appearing during vine blooming.

Then after a violent early July heatwave, weather turned mild and onshore influenced again. It stayed that way until harvest, which occurred about a month later than the previous few years.

We harvested fruit with profound flavor development, moderate potential alcohol, and ideal acidity levels. Other 2018 developments in our pursuit include culturing sound ferments with our sampling fruit to ensure reliable native yeast fermentation.

We’re also now extending lees contact until bottling for our Syrahs (omitting a single racking), and utilizing micro-oxygenation in barrel to achieve that without reductive complication. The less we move, the better wines evolve. 2018 wines were well preserved, and are showing resplendent freshness and depth.