Hartford Family Wines
Hartford Family Winery was founded in 1994 as a result of Don and Jennifer Hartford’s appreciation for the wines, the people, and the unique vineyards near their Russian River Valley home. Located in the Sonoma County town of Forestville, the winery is about 15 miles from the cool Pacific Coast.
Hartford Family Winery specializes in making wines from single vineyard sites. In recent vintages we have made about 25 different single vineyard bottlings. Small and low-yielding vineyards deliver expressive and personality-rich wine. Their single vineyard Hartford Court Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays total as few as 93 cases, up to about 800 cases. Likewise, their Hartford Old Vine Zinfandels are produced in small quantities.
All the grapes at Hartford Court are hand-picked and gently sorted with the Pinot Noir and Zinfandel partially de-stemmed, but not crushed. Approximately 75% whole berries are delivered to stainless steel open-top fermenters where they are given a pre-fermentation cold soak and stirred daily for about five days to extract optimum colour and mouth-feel. Small lots of Pinot Noir are occasionally whole-cluster fermented.
Chardonnay is treated similar with whole cluster, 100% barrel and malolactic fermentation, batonage and/or stirring of lees – vintage dependant. All the wines use native yeast, tight grained French oak with a mixture of new and old barrels with some wines receiving 100% new oak. Wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.
Hartford Family Winery specializes in making wines from single vineyard sites. In recent vintages we have made about 25 different single vineyard bottlings. Small and low-yielding vineyards deliver expressive and personality-rich wine. Their single vineyard Hartford Court Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays total as few as 93 cases, up to about 800 cases. Likewise, their Hartford Old Vine Zinfandels are produced in small quantities.
All the grapes at Hartford Court are hand-picked and gently sorted with the Pinot Noir and Zinfandel partially de-stemmed, but not crushed. Approximately 75% whole berries are delivered to stainless steel open-top fermenters where they are given a pre-fermentation cold soak and stirred daily for about five days to extract optimum colour and mouth-feel. Small lots of Pinot Noir are occasionally whole-cluster fermented.
Chardonnay is treated similar with whole cluster, 100% barrel and malolactic fermentation, batonage and/or stirring of lees – vintage dependant. All the wines use native yeast, tight grained French oak with a mixture of new and old barrels with some wines receiving 100% new oak. Wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.