Wine Making

Terrior-Driven

Inspired from ancient winemaking practices

The Approach

Drew Huffine is our winemaker. He and proprietors Matt & Sara Licklider, supported by viticulturalists Prudy Foxx and Scott Knippelmeir and a small team of seasonal cellar hands, make up the winemaking team. Our winemaking is guided by a few underlying principles. Chief among them is a resistance to dogma. California is now the planet's most extreme place to grow wine with an ever-changing climate defined by fire, flood, heat, frost, and drought. Our approach is fluid but grounded in very old, very traditional winemaking practices. The land and seasonal expression are paramount.

From the source

We source our fruit from sustainable, organic, and biodynamic vineyards. These vineyard practices produce mature fruit with lower sugars leading to flavorful, lower alcohol wines. Chemical sprays kill soil flora and lead to simplistic, fruity wines. Vines growing in living soil have the capacity to deliver terroir-driven wines. By tending to the organic biome of the vineyard, we promote biodiversity in the ecosystem and ensure that our grapes are harvested with healthy native yeast populations intact.

Minimal Intervention

In the cellar, we take inspiration from the ancient winemaking practices of Europe and mid-century California. We believe if our grapes are holistically grown and come from a truly compelling site, there is little we can do to improve upon it. Our job is simply to usher the fruit through the process of fermentation and into bottle with as little intervention as possible. This has been our approach since Day 1.

The Whites

The whites are generally crushed and pressed extremely hard with no So2 additions. The intent is maximum extraction of phenolics from the skins and seeds, capturing the essence of terroir and vintage in their aromatics and texture. The must drops into the press pan and immediately turns dark brown, or black even (spawning the term) through the process of oxidation. This dark must is transferred into tanks where the phenols perform their magical function: binding with and consuming all of the oxidized molecules. When they fall out of suspension, they take the dark color and oxidation with them. The result is juice that retains all of the complex aromatics, flavors and texture from the phenols, but is astonishingly oxidation-resistant and fresh. After +/-48 hours, the must goes straight to barrel with the gross lees for native-yeast fermentation and spontaneous malolactic fermentation. We use a mixture of used French oak barrels, but zero new oak. More recently we have been experimenting with Acacia wood barrels and cement eggs. The top wines develop for ten months in barrel, gaining complexity and texture through contact with the thick layer of lees. After 10 months, we rack off the heavy lees into our fleet of German-made Mueller stainless steel barrels where the wines rest for another six months. In the vast majority of cases, we bottle the wines without fining or filtration.

The Reds

The reds are vigorously sorted. We make a gametime decision about the use of whole clusters depending on grape variety, fruit quality, and stem maturity. The Pinot Noirs generally land in the 25%-30% whole cluster range and are fermented in small stainless steel fermenters to promote whole berry fermentation and the punched out aromatics and flavors the come with that. The Outlier Reds (Carignan, Valdiguie, Syrah, etc.) are generally fermented on 100% whole clusters with some closed top tanks (carbonic maceration) in the mix. Everything generally ferments on wild yeasts and goes through a spontaneous malolactic fermentation. The Pinot Noirs rely principally on the free run juice captured from tank, and go gently to barrel (15%-25% new French oak) where they sit undisturbed for 11-16 months. The Outlier Reds often make use of both free run juice and some light pressings, and go to barrel for 7-16 months. In the vast majority of cases, we bottle the wines without fining or filtration.

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