GENERAL INFORMATION

Producer: Bradley Brown

Country: United States
Region: Santa Cruz Mountains, California
Founded: 2002
Farming: Estate Vineyards CCOF Certified
Website: www.bigbasinvineyards.com

Click here for a detailed map of Big Basin's Estate vineyards

The mission at Big Basin is to create wines that show their Santa Cruz Mountains roots. With cool-climate, ocean-influenced, mountain vineyards throughout the AVA, owner and winemaker Bradley Brown strives to showcase location and terroir, forgoing manipulation and intervention whenever possible. The steep hillsides, cooling ocean breezes, fog, and mountain soils of their vineyard locations promote the development of deep color and complex flavors.

The winery has also been restoring their historic estate vineyard site using modern, organic viticultural methods. Drainage and erosion problems have been corrected, while they have nutured the soil with organic composts and cover crops. Their entire vineyard and olive tree orchards have been Certified Organic by CCOF. The other vineyard sites they work with, while not necessarily certified, are also farmed using organic and sustainable methods.

By keeping the yields very low and harvesting small sections of the vineyard at perfect ripeness, Big Basin strives to achieve the most important part of winemaking – great fruit.  The winemaking then becomes the art of gently extracting what the fruit has to offer. The minimalist approach continues in the cellar, with hand sorting, gentle pressing, the use of ambient yeasts, and indigenous malolactic fermentation. New and used oak barrels are used for maturation, however, when using new oak, they choose barrels which are the best at maintaining the transparency of the nuances of the fruit while supporting and amplifying these nuances.

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