I will freely admit it took me a looooong time to come around on Chambourcin. Too many years ago to count, when first introduced to the grape, I only ever experienced it in highly oaked and seemingly off kilter blends. There are so many misnomers about Chambourcin (for starters, it is not a teinturier!), the biggest of which is because it is dark in colour and therefore has high tannin. However, Chambourcin has a protein that keeps it from expressing [mouthfeel contributing] tannin so we utilize 100% whole cluster in order to boost the phenologic attributes to the wine. For the 2022 vintage, we also both co-fermented Vidal blanc and Chamboucrin whole clusters, as well as made the most orange wine ever [to-date] with the Vidal blanc. We let the Vidal blanc destined for skin contact hang a bit longer in the vineyard, and develop greater ripeness, which was expressed in the richness of the orange Vidal. Both these components were never destined for this wine, but with the ripping acidity of Chambourcin in 2022, the richness of the orange wine and the playfulness of the co-ferment, they made such a unique blend, we had to listen to the wine when it was clear each of these fermenations wanted to be part of this Young Red bottling. This bottling was not fined or filtered (nothing added or taken away), with just a small skoosh of sulfur dioxide at bottling