Description

The name ‘Dragone Ramato’ contains both an indication of the style of the wine as well as a historical nod to one of the families that lived on our estate in the early 1900s. ‘Ramato’, translating to ‘copper’ from the Italian, is a traditional style of wine in the Veneto, where Pinot grigio is fermented on the skins as one would make a red wine and results in a lightly colored wine which will become more copper hued as it ages. The Dragone family lived on the western end of what is now the RHV estate where our Pinot gris is now planted, and their memory is carried on in the name that this wine bears.
The Dragone Ramato Pinot gris was hand harvested; the clusters are tiny (golf-ball sized) and intensely colored. This wine was made in the traditional Italian ramato style: Whole clusters were placed into the fermenter and given daily pigeage just like a red wine; after 14 days the fermentation was pressed into neutral 227L oak barriques. The wine was racked off its lees at 12 months and saw a total of 14 months elevage. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. As with all Forlorn Hope wines, no new oak is utilized, and nothing was added to the must or wine (no cultured yeast, ML bacteria, water, tartaric acid, enzymes, nutrients, etc) with the exception of minimal effective SO2.