Maître de Chai
Maître de Chai
Few things thrill us as much at Nekter HQ as finding a hidden gem which is also a family winery. With Maître de Chai we get double the helping as Alex Pitt and Marty Winters both bring their families into the wine-making mix. With a shared background and love of cooking and high-end restaurants augmented by some pretty serious assistant wine-making experiences (The Restaurant at Meadowood, The French Laundry and Scholium project) these maverick wines have just the right amount of “Hmm, wow” distinguished character, are impeccably made and ideal for food accompaniments. The wines have only been in the UK for about a month and have already been picked up at some seriously good restaurants … expect these guys to make some waves in the coming years.
Click on wines below for further details and overview of tasting notes.
Cali Chenin - Maitre de Chai style. Limes, green Apple chutney, verbena lemon and cut grass with an underlying salinity on the nose. The palate candies those limes right up, sprinkles in some Jasmine and rock salt. (#tequilashots?). The finish is honey dew melon, honey suckle, honeycomb, honey I’m home!!
Vineyard in the words of Marty and Alex
This wine is a deliberate selection of our most favorite barrels of Chenin Blanc from the Wilson Vineyard “Woods Ranch”. planted in 1998 and is farmed by the fourth generation of the Wilson family. This vineyard has shown us the beauty of high-acid white wines from the Delta. Fermented with its native yeasts in neutral oak and aged in those same barrels for eleven months, bottled without any fining or filtration. Eleven barrels produced.
Our friend & mentor Leo Hansen of Leo Steen Wines inspired us to begin sourcing & producing Chenin Blanc, and made it possible for us to source grapes from this incredible site in Dry Creek. In honor of Leo, we drew inspiration for the name of this wine from Søren Aabye Kierkegaard—considered to be the first existentialist philosopher—who was a Danish social critic, theologian & poet.