SHELBURNE VINEYARDS – IAPETUS WINE, PROTOLITH

Protolith is a fresh, semi-carbonic red wine akin to a Beaujolais Nouveau but with a distinctly Vermont assemblage.

The Marquette, Louise Swenson and St. Croix grapes for this wine come from our organically-farmed McCabe’s Brook vineyard. At harvest, we carefully selected the most pristine Marquette clusters, taking care not to break any berries and removing any damaged ones from the clusters.

In the winery, whole clusters were gently placed into a tank that had been purged of oxygen using CO2. Two days later, we added 70gal of fresh and actively-fermenting juice (a mixture of Louise Swenson, St. Croix, Marquette, and La Crescent grapes).

After a 14-day semi-carbonic maceration, the partially broken-down fruit was foot tread and fermented for 14 days with regular punch-downs, and malolactic fermentation completed spontaneously. The wine was then pressed off into a stainless steel tank and racked off of gross lees a week later.