This month’s State of the street comes from Kaitlyn Callagy, our Tasting Room and Club manager.
Happy fall! What a harvest it has been, between the heat spikes and September rains, the fruit came in at a feverish pace. Taft Street is so proud to have such a hardworking winemaking and cellar team! Melissa and crew are very pleased with the quality of fruit we were able to capture for the 2022 season. We are repeating the Russian River Valley Pinot Noir Nouveau (Beaujolais style) and plan to release on November 17th this year.
We welcome our club members the weekend of October 1-2 for our annual fall club release. In addition to our regular favorites, we have released a new 2019 Russian River Valley Garagistes Pinot Noir which is a barrel select of the 2019 vintages. We tasted as a team yesterday and are all pleased with the complexity of fruit and structure in the 2019 vintage. The 2019 Russian River Valley Catie’s Corner Vineyard Chardonnay is also a new release featured in our club pack, crisper than the Garagistes Chardonnay, this will be a perfect sipper with the fall weather.
I spend my time away from the winery with my husband and our three young kids. While the kids love accompanying us on vineyard visits, grape picks and fruit stomps, there is much more Sonoma County has to offer during harvest. This area was historically known for apples, specifically Gravenstein apples. Highway 116 is also called Gravenstein Highway and Taft Street Winery’s facility was an old apple processing warehouses.
The kids and I recently visited Hale’s Apple Farm just south of the winery along 116. It was so fun to taste the different varietals of apples grown on their property. We went home with a big box and have been baking Apple Crisps almost weekly. Much like grapes, different apple varietals ripen at different times so it’s worth a return visit to see what they have. The family favorite so far has been the Pink Pearl, an apple that is green on the outside but pink on the inside!
We would like to share our family recipe for apple crisp which has proven to pair excellently with our 2021 Garagistes Sauvignon Blanc. The richer mouthfeel of the barrel fermented Sauv Blanc pairs well with the mild sweetness and tart apple flavors in the apple crisp.
Kaitlyn Callagy
Tasting Room & Wine Club Manager