2025 Llewelyn 'Batoliti' Red Blend

This is a blend of unknown Sicilian grapes from Sumu Kaw in El Dorado County. Caleb Leisure used to work with these grapes and always made incredible, very sanguine wines with them. When he moved production to Sebastopol and stopped working with them, I decided to take them in.
These were cuttings from Mt. Etna originally supposed to be clippings of Nerello Mascalese and Carricante.
Turns out it's neither of them. The DNA was sent to UC Davis' extensive grape DNA library and neither of these showed up, meaning they are Sicilian red grapes of unknown variety. One is definitely Grenache, or some version of Sicilian Grenache, as indicated by the skins, leaves, uneven ripening and flavor. The other is very odd. It is teinturier and has dark, oblong-shaped grapes with very loose clusters. The
vineyard owners call this one Petrera Nera, but that doesn't provide much information other than a name placeholder. The Petrera was destemmed and macerated for 8 days. The Sicilian Grenache was one
third whole cluster, one third destemmed and one third direct press juice, and macerated for 10 days. They were then blended and put into large barrels, where they sat for 10 months. Batoliti is a reference to the colossal, igneous granite batholith that makes up the Sierra Nevada range. Batholith is pretty hard to pronounce. It's not a snake or wingless dragon, thats a Basilisk, but try pronouncing that with an intentional
lisp and you may get it.

tl;dr: Mystery Sicilian Red Grapes. Brambly, Anise, Santa Rosa Plums, Gravel and Tar.

Pete Bloomberg Winemaker