More ZAP Fest fallout: a note from Rod Snapp at Javelina Leap Winery

I think Rod Snapp, winemaker at Javelina Leap Vineyard and Winery, enjoys the best of two worlds. After all, he lives in one of the most striking countrysides in North America: the high red-rock desert lands of Sedona in northern Arizona. But Sedona and the Yavapai County area experience temperature extremes not particularly conducive to grapegrowing and, at an elevation of well over 4000 feet, Rod isn’t harvesting Zinfandel in Sedona. Not yet, anyway.*

That’s why his other world is the Central Coast region of California, where Rod sources his grapes. I’d been meaning to follow up to Rod since I heard from him yesterday, but he beat me to the punchdown. So, I’ll let Rod tell his story:

Good Morning Russ

I thought I should give you some background on my wine since you qualified it so well. [Editor’s note: please see Sunday’s post titled Top Five Zinfandels of the 2007 ZAP Festival]. All our wines are hand-crafted and hand-punched in one-ton volumes. Our estate winery can currently produce 1200 to 1600 cases annually. Zinfandel is 75% of our total production. We currently source our fruit from California vineyards and transport the fruit back to our estate winery.

Our crush facility and barrel cellar were completed last Fall in time for harvest. We also bottle, cork, label, and capsule onsite. The 2005 Zinfandel fruit (225-case lot) is harvested from Dos Vinas Vineyard in Paso Robles and the Reserve Zinfandel (75-case lot) is from the Lakeview Vineyard in Monterey County.

We transport our one-ton insulated fermenter vats from Arizona to the respective vineyards in California. As the harvest comes in, we destem and crush onsite. Then we inoculate each vat with our selected yeast, and yes, the grapes begin the fermentation process on the twelve-hour haul back to Arizona. In fact, the vineyard manager at Dos Vinas named us “the Traveling Wineberries.”

Upon arrival in Arizona, punchdown is initiated on an around-the-clock schedule (we source volunteers from our client list and local restaurant staff). We press and finish the second fermentation in the barrel. One to ten barrels are chosen for separate bottle runs. Twenty-five- to two-hundred-case runs are common.

The 2006 Zinfandel harvest (Dos Vinas vineyard in Paso Robles) produced twenty-five oak barrels, which are one- to three-year-old barrels made of French or American oak with medium to heavy toast treatments. The 2006 Zinfandel will be produced in three to four separate case lots, twenty-five- to two-hundred-case runs, 575 cases total. The 2006 Zinfandels are scheduled for release in November 2007.

Our estate vineyards are 100% Zinfandel, and the first harvest will be September of 2008, released in spring of 2010. We will continue to be “the Traveling Wineberries” since Arizona just does not produce enough fruit at this time. We are looking forward to our newest grower in Arizona, a farmer and vintner from Oregon, Dick Erath, who just purchased 100+ acres here in Arizona.

Thanks again Russ for your interest and time. See you at ZAP next year in my favorite city.

P.S. They tell me the new website address is javelinaleapwinery.com. I left out the “leap” in my comments on your post yesterday. [Since corrected - Ed.]

Now there’s a man with a passion. And if the 2004 Zinfandel that the Snapp Family poured at last Saturday’s ZAP Festival (in Rod’s favorite city, San Francisco) is any indication, we can expect plenty of bottles full of passionate northern Arizona tastiness in the years to come. In fact, I’ve just marked my 2010 calendar and will be watching winerelease.com early that year for 2008 Zins from Javelina Leap. There aren’t any Arizona wineries listed on WineRelease yet, but I’m sure that there will be within the next 3 years.

~winehiker

*In fact, there isn’t even a defined AVA, or subappellation, for the northern Arizona region; it appears that only the entire state of Arizona qualifies for AVA designation thus far.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 2:21 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.