Maitre de Chai Red Table Wine Clements Hills 2022
Maitre de Chai Red Table Wine Clements Hills 2022
Where: Lodi, California
Grapes: Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel
Body: light/medium
Category: Red Wine
Created by former Chefs Marty Winters and Alex Pitts.
Maître de Chai's red table wine is intended for casual consumption at home and is meant to be served with food. This wine was designed from the beginning to be a delicious summer red. It’s a juicy and vibrant light red made of primarily Grenache from the Abba Vineyard, just east of the town of Lodi, with a very small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel. The cool nights and breezes of the Sacramento River Delta provide the perfect growing conditions for the Mediterranean grape variety, and help to preserve its vibrant acidity.
Fermented in an open top wooden tank and then aged in that same 1,000 gallon wooden tank to preserve the vibrancy and verve of this beautiful light bodied red.
organic // native yeasts // minimal intervention // vegan
2022 // 750ml
ABOUT THE WINEMAKER
Maître de Chai translates to cellar keeper, or the person responsible for the development and aging of wine, and, by extension, the person who manages the winery. Established in 2012, Maître de Chai — also known as MDC — is the personal project of Marty Winters and Alex Pitts who met while working at Cyprus restaurant in Sonoma. They have worked in some of California’s top kitchens — including Quince, and the French Laundry.
As with many younger winemakers in California, MDC does not own vineyards, but Alex and Marty do have close relationships with all the growers they work with and in some cases are able to farm the vineyards themselves. Their winemaking is hands-off: nothing added, nothing taken away (Alex is the assistant winemaker at Scholium Project). All fermentations are carried out by natural yeasts, sulfur is kept to a minimum, most wines are bottled without fining or filtering. Together they look to make wines of high quality in a way that best showcases the sense of place where the grapes are grown and the personality of the vineyard.