APPROACHABILITY & LONGEVITY aging for balance

Selecting Barrels

At Jordan, the selection process for oak barrels and barrel cooperages is as essential to our elegant style as the precision farming of our grapevines. It is here, in barrel, that the blended wine components harmonize, the bitter and astringent tannins become silky, and the oak contributes an elegant softness to the developing wine.

While many wineries choose their barrels prior to harvest, Jordan’s winemaking team selects barrels for each vintage only after those wines have completed primary fermentation. Every vintage, a portion of the Jordan Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is aged in a selection of barrels at various toast levels from a multitude of coopers. Two vintages of these experimental wines are then blind tasted by our winemaking team to determine which types of barrels are harmoniously suited for best expressing the varietal fruit character and tannin structure of the new vintage.

All winemaking decisions at Jordan, even the selection of barrels to be employed, are made by taste. If noted barrel producers change in quality or fundamental style, they may be removed from or added to the Jordan wine-aging program depending on what those changes contribute to the wine. Jordan aims for higher quality in all that we do every year, and we expect the same from our suppliers. The result is an artful mix of ultra-premium oak styles and toast nuances that contribute to the structure and balance of our Burgundian style Chardonnay and Bordeaux blend Cabernet Sauvignon.

More than a dozen coopers, offering the finest barrels with various toasting and tightness of oak grain, contribute to the slow-aging of our two wines. The blend of oaks changes year to year and no formulas are employed, but a sharp focus is placed on using a judicious amount of new oak, typically less than 40%, to retain the wine’s natural elegance and balance.

French oak, harvested from France’s famed Vosges and Tronçias forests, is used exclusively for Jordan Russian River Valley Chardonnay. Though Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon was conceived under the philosophy of aging in 50% American and 50% French oak, our winemaker has increased the amount of French oak in recent vintages, thanks to the quality of fruit tannins in the wine—a direct result of our fruit sourcing changes. Paying a premium price for subtle oak nuances is expressly our intention at Jordan, where our winemaker strives to achieve a consistent, pitch-perfect balance between fruit, tannin and acidity in our wines each vintage.