2014 Petit Manseng
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The 2014 Tablas Creek Vineyard Petit Manseng is Tablas Creek’s fifth bottling of this traditional grape from southwest France. Petit Manseng is best known from appellation of Jurancon, where it has made admired but not widely disseminated sweet wines for centuries. Petit Manseng achieves sufficient concentration and sugar content to make naturally sweet wines without botrytis. This character was so valued that Petit Manseng is noted as the only wine used to baptize a king of France: Henry IV, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, in his native Navarre.
Tasting Notes
The 2014 Petit Manseng is a pretty green-gold color. The nose has tropical, spicy and herbal notes, with pineapple, tarragon, crystallized ginger and peppered citrus. On the palate it is lightly sweet but also quite tangy, with rich texture and flavors of dried mandarin, honey, and peppery spice. The wine finishes clean and dry with a lingering flavor of lemon zest. We expect it to age gracefully.
Technical Details
Appellation
- Adelaida District Paso Robles
Technical Notes
- 14.7% Alcohol by Volume
- 60 Cases Produced
Blend
- 100% Petit Manseng
Recipes & Pairings
Food Pairings
- Foie gras
- Salty cheeses
- Fruit desserts
- Spicy Thai and Indian curries
Production Notes
We imported Petit Manseng in 2003 in the hopes of making a naturally sweet wine. The vines were released to us in 2006, and our first small vineyard block was planted in 2007. Our Petit Manseng grapes were grown on our certified organic estate vineyard.
The 2014 vintage was the result of three years of drought and our earliest-ever beginning to the growing season. The summer was warm but without serious heat spikes, and our coolest August in a decade slowed ripening at a critical period. When it warmed back up in September, the fruit tumbled in, and we finished in mid-October, about two weeks earlier than normal. The result was a vintage with excellent concentration balanced by good freshness, which should be vibrant and powerful young, and should age beautifully.
Our Petit Manseng was harvested on October 1st at 26° Brix and a pH of 3.01. We fermented it in barrel, and stopped its fermentation when it had about 33 grams/liter of sugar left and sat at an alcohol of 14.7%. The high acidity makes it taste much drier than the sugar reading would suggest. The wine was aged on its lees in barrel and bottled in June, 2015.