If you are not familiar with Aurora Point, you might be surprised that we are proudly offering a five-year-old Sauvignon Blanc. Most Sauv Blancs are released soon after bottling and intended to be consumed within a year: sell it fast, drink it fast. Beyond that timeframe, they usually don’t have strong aromatic retention and can start to taste dull, sour, or just off-kilter.
But some Sauvignon Blancs are different.
“I can’t explain why it ages,” says our winemaker, Kristina Shideler, about the single-vineyard Aurora Point. “It’s just a very intense site.” Mountain tannins and higher acid certainly contribute to its aging prowess—yes, white wines contain a little tannin—but this wine still feels inexplicable. “The other day I tasted a 2013 Aurora Point—I randomly found it while I was looking for wines to pour for a harvest intern,” Kristina recounts. “It was incredible. The texture was brilliant, the aromatics were gorgeous. Not every vintage of Aurora lives ten-plus years, but a lot of them do.”
Aurora Point Vineyard is situated on a steep, rocky, secluded slope near our lower reservoir around 800 feet elevation. It is fitting that “aurora” is Latin for dawn since the site faces east-southeast and greets the sunrise. It receives steady morning light but is completely shaded by the mountain every afternoon. “It’s a cooler exposure and the grapes have really pretty acidity,” Kristina notes.
The vineyard crew uses three different leafing methods, leading to an incredible diversity of clusters to crush together: At the top of the vineyard, we aggressively remove the leaves in the fruiting zone, and the extra solar rays brings out tropical notes like passionfruit. In the middle of the vineyard, we leaf moderately so that each cluster still has some shade, resulting in the peachy core of the wine. At the bottom of the vineyard the leaves are left alone, and this is where we get lime zest, kumquat, and exotic tart fruits like feijoa (also known as pineapple guava).
For further variation we ferment and age in 132-gallon neutral oak puncheon barrels and as well as neutral oak foudres—large, upright vessels. This combination yields diverse palate weights and unrestrained aromatic expression. The 2019 vintage exemplifies the dimension that can be achieved when stellar Sauvignon Blanc grapes and attentive winemaking are treated to several years of bottle integration.
