The Muir-Hanna “99 Vine” Primitivo is at the northwest corner of Bill and Claudia’s property.  It consists of three rows of 33 vines and was planted by Bill for use as “experimental/home wine” purposes in 1998.  We added it into our home wine lot in 2001 but began using it commercially in 2002 as a unique wine for our wine club members.  The vines are 110R rootstock budded with stock from Dave Fanucci’s vineyard in Alexander Valley.  Vine spacing is 6 X 10.5 feet, the rows are oriented WSW by ENE, and the vines are trained on a quadrilateral cordon with a split canopy.

This 2009 vintage of 1.04 tons was harvested by our family and friends and then crushed in a shed at the John Muir Hanna Vineyard.  Bill and Michael punched the cap down twice per day during fermentation and then pressed the wine using a wood basket press on October 16.  On October 18, the wine was racked to barrels, the malo/lactic culture was added, and the barrels moved into the winery.  The wine was racked into clean barrels at the completion of the M/L conversion on January 16, 2010.  It was racked again in June and September of 2010.  During aging it was topped once per month.

The wine was pumped from barrels on April 16, 2011, filtered, and sterile bottled on April 25.  We bottled  two  barrels to produce 45 cases.