Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs 2017
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Winemaker Notes
Making a white wine from a red grape requires great carehand-picked fruit, early morning harvest, optimal fruit maturity and delicate pressing. A balance of bright flavors, crisp acidity and minimal tannins is achieved. Barrel and malolactic fermentation of wine lots add richness and body. Yeast contact in the bottle harmonizes all the elements together in a mature, toasty style. The youthful fruit character of the wine will develop and soften with additional age in the bottle. With proper storage, this sparkling wine will be delicious for many years, even decades to come.
Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs is particularly well-suited to serve with a variety of foods, including soft and nutty cheeses, macadamia nut-crusted halibut, and pork tenderloin with fresh rosemary and lemon thyme.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
The fruit sourced for this blend of 83% Pinot Noir and 17% Chardonnay hails from Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa, and Marin counties. It’s a lovely, medium-bodied brut with aromas of late-spring fruit: fresh and succulent apricot and crisp apple with a spark of gingerbread. The perfume continues as honeyed tropical fruits and Asian pear chime in on the palate.
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Wine Enthusiast
Only a hint of pink in the straw color of this wine gives a clue that it’s made from dark grapes. A tempting, toasty, doughy aroma leads to a rich blend of fruity and savory flavors, all backed by lively acidity and a long-lasting stream of fine bubbles
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Connoisseurs' Guide
83% Pinot Noir; 17% Chardonnay. On the one hand, a wine that offers up a good deal of juicy, lightly cherryish fruit but, on the other, is fit with a full measure of creamy yeast that testifies to the method of its making, Schramsberg’s 2017 Blanc de Noirs is a deep and generously filled sparkling wine that manages to be as graceful as it is wonderfully rich. It is both luscious and lively with neatly integrated acidity contributing a nice bit of finishing crispness and, while wholly enjoyable on its own, it will find a most welcome place at the table with dishes ranging from salmon to lighter pork preparations and pan-roasted duck breasts.
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Wine Spectator
A lively and elegant yet festive version, with luscious strawberry, yeast roll and green apple flavors that finish with a crisp yet plump accent. Drink now.
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In 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies founded Schramsberg and set out to make world-class sparkling wine in the true méthode traditionelle style on the property originally established in 1862 by German immigrant Jacob Schram. There were only 22 bonded wineries in Napa Valley and fewer than 100 acres of California vineyards planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Schramsberg was the first California winery to provide a Blanc de Blancs in 1965 followed by a Blanc de Noirs in 1967. Now their son, Hugh Davies, leads the winery’s management and winemaking team.
The Schramsberg estate in Napa Valley’s famed Diamond Mountain District is a registered historic landmark with Napa’s first caves, hand-dug in the 1880s, and its first hillside vineyards. Quality focus drives all aspects of wine production starting with access to over 120 cool-climate sites in Carneros, Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma, which result in over 200 separate lots. Unique among California sparkling wine houses, Schramsberg ferments about 25 percent of its juice in oak barrels to produce rich, flavorful, complex wines.
Most of Schramsberg’s viticultural and winemaking practices are carried out by hand: grapes are hand harvested, the wines are handcrafted, and the bottles are stacked and riddled in underground caves. The family and the winery embody excellence and innovation in winemaking, as well as preservation of their land, their history and their community.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.