The 2013 Jelly Jar white blend labeled “Hearsay” looks harmless. Oh, but there’s a sharp wit and saucy spirit behind that wan and innocent face.
It offers violets and meadow grasses to the nose, alongside hints of stonefruit — pleasing, yet with a mischievous spell. After the kindly welcome comes a fading wisp of summer melon, scooped almost to the rind, along with an appealing note of sliced apple, browning under the sun.
Despite Hearsay’s pale color, it promises intrigue.
Again, however, the wine opens with an angelic blush. A gentle touch of peach and apricot, feathers over your palate, soothed further by a floral note — a moment of tranquility before the wine alerts you that it is not a timid white.
As the mellow flavor of stonefruits settles, earthier impressions begin to mumble some pleasantries. Their efforts almost elude translation. You catch an almost bitter, nutty trace here, a tart gooseberry there, perhaps a dab of dark honey and some drying sweetgrass.
Yet the fruit, deepened by melon, is prominent. On the finish this wallows, developing more comfortable notes, like baked apple and crumbled nuts.
It’s a wonderful experience.
Jelly Jar winemaker Andy Pestoni refers to the 2013 Hearsay as “an experiment in a bottle.”
He harvested Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat Canelli from Lake County’s Dorn Vineyard — on the same day, without particular reference to each varietal’s ripeness — and crushed them together as whole clusters.
Semillon makes up 85 percent of the blend, and he picked it at an ideal moment. Ten percent involves Sauvignon Blanc, just approaching ripeness at the time Pestoni harvested. Muscat Canelli fills out the blend. It was, he said, almost overdue.
“I just wanted to make something interesting,” Pestoni explained.
He then fermented the blend in stainless steel slowly at temperatures that never strayed more than a degree or two from a cool 50.
“You get all of that nice fruit,” Pestoni said of the process. He points to the quality of the vineyard for the wine’s remarkable character rather than any methodological spell.
“Nothing tricky about it,” he said.
The balance is neat. Because Semillon is so prevelant, the wine will continue to develop. At bottling, the presence of melon was more noticeable on the palate. The Sauvignon Blanc lends a bright, acidic character, muted somewhat by the dash of Muscat Canelli — responsible, one assumes, for the rich edges to the fruit.
So the experiment worked very well indeed. And there’s hope he may be encouraged to play around again. Or maybe that’s just innocent hearsay.
“It was a fun wine to make,” Pestoni acknowledged.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
