Jupiter Wine Co. "RIOT!" Vermentino 2023

"RIOT!" is 100% Vermentino sourced from the Las Cimas Vineyard in the Russian River Valley, California. Crisp and refreshing, it opens with ripe stone fruit and citrus aromas with prominent sea salt and flint notes. Stone fruit flavors dominate the palate, balanced with cleansing lemon acidity, sea salt spray and a crisp, saline finish. 

All grapes were foot-tread and macerated on skins and stems for 24 hours, then directly pressed into fiberglass. Fermentation took place spontaneously with wild yeasts from the vineyard, and the wine slowly underwent secondary fermentation throughout the winter and early spring. Aged for 12 months on all lees in fiberglass, then carefully racked by hand in the spring. Bottled unfined and unfiltered, with a small addition of less than 20 parts winemaking sulfur before bottling.

The folks at Jupiter Wine Co. have an unapologetic love for the island Vermentinos of Sardinia and Corsica, and like both of those locations, sunshine is fortunately abundant in Northern California. Las Cimas Vineyard grows some pretty serious Vermentino, with a wine-torn-from-rock characteristic that is rich in concentrated fruit flavors laced with mineral notes.

The people behind Jupiter Wine Co. are more than just a community of like-minded individuals that share a love for minimal intervention wine. They aim to establish an economic engine that stands up to consolidated, corporate wine and the economic apartheid those organizations have created towards agricultural and hospitality workers.

Those organizations have appropriated the term "sustainability" as a sales and marketing tool without considering the economic sustainability of the most fragile communities essential to its creation. What they’ve given us are gross domestic products in their pursuit of Gross Domestic Product. When you support Jupiter Wine Company, you can have the confidence that 100% of the profits generated go to affordable housing solutions for the communities most responsible for its creation.

Label artwork: Milk and Cheese "Death to False Wine" by cartoonist Evan Dorkin