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Beckmen 1 NGREDIENT inagural release

Inaugural Release of 1NGREDIENT

1NGREDIENT wine rep­re­sents an evo­lu­tion that com­bines our past 25+ years of wine­grow­ing and wine­mak­ing knowl­edge with our pas­sion for the Bio­dy­nam­ic farm­ing prin­ci­ples that we have embraced and imple­ment­ed over the past 18 years at our Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard. As its name implies, 1NGREDIENT is wine made from one ingre­di­ent, Bio­dy­nam­i­cal­ly cer­ti­fied wine grapes. Because there are no addi­tives or preser­v­a­tives uti­lized, this is our first wine which can be clas­si­fied as a nat­ur­al” wine in most circles.

In addi­tion to only using the one ingre­di­ent, wine grapes, we were also very con­scious of the envi­ron­men­tal impact we made while pro­duc­ing this prod­uct. Besides the trac­tors we used to farm the blocks for 1NGREDIENT and the fuel we used to trans­port the grapes to the win­ery, these wines were crushed and bot­tled by hand. Except for the sort­ing, destem­ming, and the cork­er we used to make sure each bot­tle has the best pos­si­ble seal, there was no oth­er mod­ern machin­ery used in mak­ing these wines.

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The first releas­es of 1NGREDIENT, in June 2020, are both extend­ed skin con­tact white wines, 2018 1NGREDIENT Viog­nier Bal­lard Canyon ($65) and 2018 1NGREDIENT Sauvi­gnon Blanc Bal­lard Canyon ($48). The sec­ond release of 1NGREDIENT wine in Jan­u­ary 2021 is the 2019 1NGREDIENT Chardon­nay Bal­lard Canyon ($75).

The grapes were fer­ment­ed in Ampho­ra made by TAVA in North­ern Italy. We worked with TAVA to cre­ate these spe­cial ves­sels for our project focus­ing on the right mix of sand as well as defin­ing the cor­rect tem­per­a­ture the pots were fired at to ensure the right amount of oxy­gena­tion dur­ing fer­men­ta­tion and ageing. 

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1 NGREDIENT aging

We chose Ampho­ra as a look to the past as we tried to uti­lize prac­tices that were used ages ago when wine was made with­out addi­tives and the fan­cy machin­ery that we use today. These spe­cial­ly designed Ampho­ra pro­vid­ed a per­fect neu­tral ves­sel to fer­ment and age this type of wine, allow­ing the char­ac­ter of the grapes, vine­yard and win­ery to shine through in each bottle.

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The wine was fer­ment­ed and aged on its skins for 10 months. This tech­nique is an unusu­al way to pro­duce white wine. The skins con­tain anti-oxida­tive com­pounds that allowed us to bot­tle the wine with­out the use of sul­phur diox­ide, the main preser­v­a­tive used in wine­mak­ing. White wines with long skin con­tact not only pick up the anti-oxida­tive prop­er­ties of the skins but also extract tan­nins that help bol­ster the struc­ture need­ed for the wine to age over a long peri­od of time. The wines do not see any fin­ing or fil­tra­tion and are bot­tled with a haze. The haze will help pro­tect the wines from pre­ma­ture oxi­da­tion and spoilage once in bottle.

1 NGREDIENT bottling blog
1 NGREDIENT labelling blog

Our main goal in mak­ing wines is qual­i­ty. In every­thing we make, we want to pro­duce wines that taste and feel good, that have good vari­etal char­ac­ter, and rep­re­sent our vine­yards and wine­mak­ing. These two ini­tial releas­es of 1NGREDIENT are seri­ous, thought pro­vok­ing wines of high qual­i­ty. These wines are avail­able now to pur­chase in our online shop, and while they are not includ­ed in our quar­ter­ly Wine Club releas­es, mem­bers will receive their usu­al Club dis­count on these wines. 

We are very excit­ed to share this new project with all of you. We could not be proud­er of these two inau­gur­al releas­es as we branch out into a new, excit­ing world where the poten­tial is limitless! 

Cheers,

Steve Beck­men

Wine­mak­er

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