Peterson Winery Zero Manipulation Tollini Vineyard 2017
£17.25
The wine
Inviting aromas of wild red fruits, hints of spice and a rustic minerality lead to luscious layers of raspberry, strawberry, floral notes and pomegranate, surrounded by a subtle structure and a touch of liquorice on the finish.
Zero Manipulation is Fred Peterson's philosophy as much as a wine name: low-tech, high-touch winemaking with native fermentations, minimal additions and no corrections, so the vintage and the vineyard reach the bottle unedited. He was vineyard manager at Ridge Vineyards from 1985 to 1990. The Tollini vineyard is in Redwood Valley, Mendocino.
The producer
Peterson Winery
View all Peterson Winery winesFred Peterson is an iconoclast with an old-world winemaking philosophy and a long commitment to sustainable farming. From 1985 to 1990 he was vineyard manager at the legendary Ridge Vineyards, and he founded his own operation in the Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma.
The approach has a name: Zero Manipulation. It means low-tech, high-touch winemaking, native fermentations, minimal additions and no corrections, on the principle that the vintage and the vineyard should reach the bottle unedited. It is a philosophy far more common in Europe than in California, and Peterson have been doing it since long before it was fashionable.
Dry Creek Valley is Zinfandel country, a narrow Sonoma valley of gravelly benchland and hillside where the grape has been grown since the nineteenth century. The Bradford Mountain estate vineyard sits high above the valley floor, and mountain-grown Zinfandel gives smaller berries, firmer structure and more mineral character than the valley below.
