En Cavale Sauvignon Blanc 2018

En Cavale is a collaboration between Wolfgang Weber and Chad Hinds (also known for Methode Sauvage / Iruai), founded in 2017 with the goal of making low-intervention wines from organically farmed California vineyards. This Sauvignon Blanc comes from a vineyard in the Oakley and Knightsen area of eastern Contra Costa County, where vines planted in the early 1990s grow in wind-blown Delhi sandy loam soils along the Sacramento Delta. The sandy soils allowed the vines to be planted on their own roots, free from phylloxera risk.

Afternoons in this part of the delta are regularly cooled by winds funneling in from the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and Suisun Bay, moderating what would otherwise be very hot growing conditions. That diurnal shift keeps natural acidity high and allows for early harvesting of Sauvignon Blanc with freshness intact. The site sits roughly 50 miles east of San Francisco, within the Contra Costa County AVA (formally established in 2024) and the broader San Francisco Bay AVA.

Grapes are foot-trodden and given brief skin contact before pressing. Fermentation happens spontaneously with indigenous yeasts, with no temperature control. The wine is then racked to neutral French oak for approximately four months, bottled unfined and unfiltered, and finished with a minimal SO2 addition of around 20ppm. Production is small, typically around 200 cases.