Home Industry News Releases Clos de la Tech Announces the Inaugural Release of Their 2005 Vintage

Clos de la Tech Announces the Inaugural Release of Their 2005 Vintage

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Santa Cruz Mountains Winery Launches “La Cache” Program of Perfectly Stored, Fully Mature, Reserve List Pinot Noirs

Woodside, CA, March 8, 2018 – Clos de la Tech, a top producer in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA,  is known for producing some of California’s longest-lived and most complex Pinot Noirs. The combination of dangerously steep vineyards, grueling coastal weather, miniscule yields and winemaking techniques practiced in Burgundy in the 1830s—native yeast fermentation of hand-picked, foot-crushed whole clusters—ensures that CDLT’s Pinots have the concentration and structure to evolve and improve over decades rather than years. Typically, each vintage is aged for four to five years before release.

Since 1996, CDLT has stored a portion of every vintage under perfect conditions for future release to restaurant reserve lists. Their extensive wine library is called La Cache, French for a hiding place—especially one underground—and computer-speak for memory. The inaugural release from La Cache includes two 13-year-old wines that have never been sold before. Both wines retail for $200 a bottle.

2005 Domaine Valeta “Sunny Slope” Pinot Noir (48 cases produced) $200 SRP

2005 Domaine du Docteur Rodgers Pinot Noir (106 cases produced) $200 SRP

“When we first conceived Clos de la Tech in the mid-90s, we decided to pursue a different direction than most California Pinot Noir producers,” says co-owner TJ Rodgers. “Rather than make light, fruity wines with limited aging potential, we set out to produce highly concentrated and structured Pinot Noirs that would improve over time, like the great Burgundies of France. To guarantee that America’s top restaurants and our customers could enjoy these wines at their peak, we created “La Cache,” an extensive library of every CDLT Pinot dating back to 1996. Our first offering comes from the previously unreleased 2005 vintage – a year that is just now reaching its stride. We plan to follow this with an offering of our 2008 vintage in the fall of 2018.”

“We called 2005 our prodigal vintage,” says co-owner Valeta Rodgers, “because horrendous weather limited our production to only 154 cases versus the 2,025 cases we expected. Poor fruit set, tiny berries and miniscule yields gave the wines incredible concentration, but also hard tannins. It has taken nearly 13 years and a lot of patience, but both Pinots are finally drinking brilliantly. They offer wine lovers a rare and memorable experience. It’s not often you get to enjoy deep, powerful, vibrant Pinot Noirs at their absolute peak.”

Clos de la Tech’s 2005s are available at fine restaurants and independent retailers in select major markets. The wines are also available through CDLT’s wine club and online store at www.closdelatech.com. To inquire about sales and distribution opportunities please email vm@tjrodgers.com.

About Clos de la Tech

With caves tunneled deep into a vine-covered ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains and vineyards so steep they have to be farmed with a unique, specially-designed tractor moved by cables, Clos de la Tech is one of the most ambitious and innovative Pinot Noir producers in California. The winery was established in 1994 and continues to be operated by TJ Rodgers, founder and retired CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, and his wife, Valeta, herself a former chip designer. Some of the highlights at Clos de la Tech include extreme growing conditions, high-altitude terrain, hand farming, high-density planting (4,150 vines per acre), low yields (often less than one ton per acre), gravity-flow winemaking using foot-crushing and native-yeast fermentations with no fining, pumping or filtration, just as winemaking was done in Burgundy in the 1830s.

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