La Clarine Farm Petit Manseng 2018

La Clarine Farm's 2018 Petit Manseng comes from the Fenaughty Vineyard in El Dorado County, Sierra Foothills, where the vines grow in volcanic loam soil at 2,900 feet elevation. Petit Manseng produces characteristically small, thick-skinned, loosely bunched berries with an unusually high skin-to-juice ratio — a trait that concentrates flavor while keeping the yields extremely low.

Winemaker Hank Beckmeyer pressed the grapes very gently into flextanks, where fermentation proceeded spontaneously with ambient yeasts. The wine completed malolactic fermentation, fell clear naturally, and was bottled without fining or filtration. A small addition of sulfites was made at bottling. The color is a deep gold-green.

Petit Manseng is a grape native to the Pyrenees foothills, where it is the backbone of sweet Jurançon — but La Clarine's version is vinified dry. The variety's defining characteristic is its ability to accumulate sugar while holding extraordinary levels of acidity, which here translates into a dry wine with cut, concentration, and real aging potential. Beckmeyer notes the wine can age 5 to 8 years from vintage.

Farming on the organically managed Fenaughty Vineyard follows minimal-intervention principles consistent with La Clarine's broader philosophy, which draws on the 'do nothing' methods of farmer-philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka.