19 Feb Please The Palate Wine of the Week: Edaphos Wines 2018 Petite Arvine, Alder Springs Vineyard, Mendocino County

The biggest challenge about learning about wine is that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. The world of wine is vast and there are thousands of grape varieties. So it is always exciting to discover something new for the first time and that is why the Edaphos Wines 2018 Petite Arvine from the Alder Springs Vineyard in Mendocino County is the Please The Palate wine of the week.

Edaphos Wines is a new wine from the people at Ernest Vineyards in Sonoma. They are focused on exploring the bounty of Sonoma and playing with different winemaking techniques.

Petite Arvine is a white wine grape planted in the Valais region of Switzerland, as well as Valle d’Aosta in Italy. The grape has been cultivated in Valais for at least 500 years but there are only small amounts of it planted in Switzerland and it is not commonly exported.

But Edaphos Wines creators Todd Gottula and his wife Erin Brooks, along with winemaker Joseph Ryan, found a small planting of Petit Arvine sitting at 1900 feet elevation in Alder Spring Vineyard located in the northern part of Mendocino County, only 12 miles from the Mendocino Coast.

Petite Arvine is an early budding and late ripening grape that maintains acidity well. It is direct pressed into neutral wood and stainless steel for a slow and cool primary fermentation over 10 months before filtering and bottling.

The Edaphos Wines 2018 Petite Arvine, Alder Springs Vineyard, Mendocino County is a super aromatic wine with floral, peach and chalky notes. On the palate, the wine has a beautiful texture with citrus notes. The wine has a lovely weight on the mid-palate that extends across the palate for a mouthwatering finish.

Only 85 cases were made of the 2018 Edaphos Petite Arvine, which retails for $42. But don’t worry, if you fall in love with this wine, as I did, you can smile knowing up to 200 cases will be made for the 2019 vintage!