Harvest

While the popular term is "crush," we don't really crush the grapes at Freeman. Rather, we meticulously destem each cluster, while working to keep as many "whole berries" intact as possible. At the same time, we intensively hand-sort the fruit, removing leaves, bits of stem and debris - anything that could diminish grape quality, or tarnish the natural essence of the flavors.

The grapes, predominantly destemmed "whole berries," are carefully transferred into waiting five-ton, open-top fermentor tanks specifically designed for Pinot Noir. These special tanks employ a gentler gravity-flow as opposed to mechanical pumps. The fruit is then "cold soaked" for several days prior to fermentation.

Fermentation

Once fermentation starts, the grape skins rise to the surface and form a "cap." In the early days of winemaking, people actually stepped into the tanks to stomp the grapes, extracting flavor and color from the skins. Nowadays, we gently punch down the "cap" by hand to release its color, tannin and flavors into the wine. This punch-down process occurs several times a day during peak fermentation, for approximately one week to 14 days. Next, the resulting smooth, less tannic "free run" wine, is drained off and transferred into a separate tank. Gentle pressings are performed on the remaining skins to create another unique lot. After these pressings are completed, the free run and pressed wines are blended together by winemaker Ed Kurtzman and allowed to rest for a day before being carefully racked into select French oak barrels for the all-important aging process.

Aging

Our aging is done in barrels from five of the leading Burgundian coopers including: Tonnellerie Rousseau, Cadus and François Frères. To balance the influence of the oak on the naturally vibrant and sophisticated Sonoma Coast and Russian River fruit, half of our barrels are one and two-years old, and half are new. To further highlight the fruit’s bright elegance, we age our wines for approximately 11 months in barrel, and then another several months after bottling.

From the careful cultivation of our world-class fruit to our selection of the finest French barrels, our winemaking reflects a traditional Burgundian style. Though time consuming and expensive, this artisan approach to winemaking yields wines of rare structure and personality. By crafting wines in small lots and deliberately keeping production low, we ensure our attention to the minutest details – details that allow each of our Freeman wines to achieve their full, rich potential.