Mineral Wines Tasting Room
419 B Main Street
Murphys, CA
brett
Our Home Vineyard is the Cherokee Creek Vineyard, located in the historic town of Angels Camp, home of Mark Twain’s famous Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. We live in a region famous for its Gold, Frogs, and…. WINE!
Cherokee Creek Vineyard was founded in 1993 by the Henkel Family with just one acre of Merlot grapes. In 1996 we planted 3 additional acres of Merlot which was sold to Calaveras County wineries until 2005, when portions of the Merlot were grafted over to Viognier, Roussanne and Petit Sirah.
The soil here is composed of clay loam and alluvial rock, which naturally controls grape yields by producing very small berries which give very full bodied wines. The climate here is well suited to warmer climate grapes native to the warmer areas of Europe.
Merlot is planted on a closely spaced, unilaterally trained vertical cordon, which gives excellent exposure to the fruit to allow uniform ripening and richness in the resulting wines. We take pride in the fact that our Estate grown Merlot grapes yield wines of excellent complexity, power and grace.
Roussane is also planted to a vertical trained cordon, with the famed Tablas Creek clone of this variety which was derived from plantings in the Rhone River Valley of France. The close spacing of the vines give us wines bursting with intense fruit characters. Roussanne has a distinctively honey like flavor profile, with the wines giving delicate aromas of honeysuckles and quince. We use Roussanne as the base grape in our "Vino del Oro" white wine blend.
Viognier gives us tropical fruits such as mango, papaya and pineapple, with a little stonefruit character to make things really interesting. Viognier grows very well in Calaveras County, easily being a hands-down favorite for best white grape to grow here.
Petite Sirah is trellised in the quadrilateral method of 4 arms per vine, with 32 spurs. Typically yields are approximately 2 tons per acre of very small-berried clusters. In the many years of making Petit Sirah wines, our Winemaker Brett Keller will attest that this is the darkest Petit Sirah wine made in Calaveras County. It is no wonder that Petit Sirah is Brett’s favorite variety of wine!
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Mineral Wines Tasting Room
419 B Main Street
Murphys, CA
brett