Iruai - 'Giallo' - Nebbiolo - California, USA - 2022

2022 iruai ‘Giallo' Nebbiolo 100% Nebbiolo California AVA 13.5% ALC / 250 cases produced 'Giallo' refers to the hyper stylized, pulpy horror films that came out of Italy in the 60's, 70's and 80's. Giallo's are my favorite thing to come out of Italy. My second favorite thing are the rugged and savage expressions of the Nebbiolo grape to come out of the Valtellina region of the Italian Alps. Giallo (the wine) is an homage to those wines. Made from Nebbiolo grown at 3,000 ft. and aged for 90 days on the skins, Giallo is a brooding and perfumed beast that attacks you with concentrated spice and groovy texture. It's sexy, hypnotic, and set to Italo Disco. Discerning swingers drink ‘Giallo.’

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Iruai Winery (“ear-oo-eye" … the artist formerly known as Methode Sauvage) was started in 2013 by Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds in Berkeley, CA as a gypsy natural wine project, before laying down roots in the mythical Shasta-Cascade mountains of Siskiyou County. Trading in the urban winery hustle for the vigneron life, we are exploring avant garde vineyard planting and rehabilitation techniques using the permaculture methods laid out by Masanobu Fukuoka, while formulating our own “chaos organics” method of re-enchanting the land. Truly unlike anywhere else in California, Western Siskiyou County feels like a cross between Switzerland and Montana, cut with a rain shadow from Mount Shasta that divides it starkly between high mountain prairie and dense alpine forests. Finding ourselves in largely untested grape growing territory, with high elevations and a continental climate, we have turned Iruai into exploration and celebration of esoteric varieties that flourish in the Alps of Europe. While we work to grow our Western Siskiyou County estate projects, we purchase fruit and lease vineyards throughout the Shasta-Cascade, from the Trinity Alps of California to the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon. We seek to make wine with a sense of place by employing no additives and removing no character. Our goal in the vineyard is to let the vines thrive like they would in the wild, and in the cellar, to shepherd each ferment through its own natural development and evolution.

-Chad Hinds