Vineyard Redevelopment
The Peter Mondavi Family assessed the vineyards in the early '90's and determined that redevelopment would ensure better fruit for better winemaking. Vine age (25-30+ years) on some of the acreage was not producing optimum fruit and desired varietals. Phylloxerated vines needed replacement on some acreage as well.
A program summary:
- Over 450 of the winery's 850 acres have been re-planted
- Replanting initiative is focused on red Bordeaux varietals (72% of all planted areas)
- Planting of new clonal selections is based on extensive family research in Bordeaux
- To date, the program has an overall expenditure of $21.6 million
Winemaking Improvements:
A separate "winery within a winery" was built for handcrafting the premium Charles Krug-Peter Mondavi Family portfolio.
An enhancement summary:
- Installed cutting-edge crushing and pressing equipment
- Improving tannin development by more direct movement of juice from press to barrel
- Scheduling less barrel time for Chardonnay; supplemented with cold tank fermentation and 100% French oak to capture the lively flavors
- Installed belt conveyors to allow for hand selection, gentle fruit movement and optimized tannic extraction
- Installed smaller 1.5, 10, 15 and 20-ton fermenting tanks to enable small lot fermentation of grapes picked at optimum maturity
- Aging all Family Reserve tier wines, and many of the Napa Valley tier wines, in 100% French oak barrels for greater finesse and complexity
- Purchased open-top fermentors for Pinot Noir production to allow for traditional Burgundian technique production (i.e., cap management)
- Installed state-of-the-art environmental controls in the barrel room to duplicate cave atmosphere for aging
- Installed an integrated mono-bloc filling machine for more delicate handling of the wine when it is at its most fragile
- Moving to an estate based winery
- Moving to night harvesting of the fruit to maintain fruit flavor