WINEGROWING
Rudd Oakville Estate is uniquely situated on Grand Cru terroir. In any great winegrowing region, the greatest wines express place, vintage, and expertise. Our mission, as stewards of this unique place, is to realize and articulate the potential of this remarkable growth. Great wines are also the result of an agricultural endeavor and for that reason we consider ourselves wine growers rather than wine makers. This subtlety is important, insisting that our wines are not manufactured or produced, but are the product of our site and expertise. Our most impactful decisions are driven by and often made in the field. The winegrowing cycle starts with pruning in winter and ends with blending, nearly two years later.
This deep level of care extends down from the vines, and touches every step of the winemaking process. Once picked at night, the fruit lives in small 40-lb protective crates. While the grapes await hand sorting, they are refrigerated to ensure extraction of proper color and desired flavor attributes. The fruit is then treated to a multi-phased sorting procedure that ends with a painstakingly slow and precise hand-sort by a group of 10 team members. The free-run from the fermentation tanks is stored in French oak barrels. Once our winegrower determines which lots will make the best wine based on exceedingly high standards, the others are declassified (which can amount to up to half the total production). By the time it comes to finally bottling the wine, the team is proud and confident that they’re presenting the greatest possible vintage the land is capable of producing.
THE WORKSHOP
Completed in 2016, the Workshop was designed as a continuation of the winegrowing operation in the vineyard. Knowing that the wine is at its greatest potential the day it arrives as grapes in picking totes, all of the infrastructure has been put in place to realize this potential. As not all growing seasons are the same, and we do not have the same goals for each lot, there are a range of tools available. This includes barrel fermentation, stainless steel fermentation, and our unique concrete tanks. After alcoholic fermentation and extended maceration, around one month in total, the wine is drained from the tanks by gravity into French oak barrels for malolactic fermentation and elevage of 18-24 months.
The unique Rudd Estate concrete tanks, while very traditional in appearance and concept, are technologically advanced. With the assistance of the third generation mason that oversaw the remodel of the Petrus cellar in Pomerol, 12 concrete tanks were built in-house, using 60 tons of crushed andesite rocks from the vineyard as aggregate in our Workshop.
