NEWSLETTER    NOVITIATE WINES

We are very proud to be making our wines in one of California’s most historic wineries. The old Novitiate Winery was built in 1888 in Los Gatos by Jesuits from what is now Santa Clara University.  The Jesuits made mostly altar wine in these old cellars for nearly a century, stopping in 1986.  

With the 2003 vintage, in collaboration with the Jesuits, who are also our landlords, we reintroduced the Novitiate line of wines here at Testarossa.  We worked with a local designer and came up with a retro label design combining elements from a Novitiate label used in the 1960s with subtle Testarossa nuances.  The bulk of these wines come from the last, heavy press of our main Testarossa labeled bottlings.  Heavy press wine has all the flavor of free run and light press wines, but it tends to be a little less silky in the mouthfeel due to extra seed and stem tannins that come form this stage of the winemaking process.  Most years we also experiment with new vineyards sources, many of them from very young vines.  As we evaluate the long term prospects from these new vineyards, the initial “young vine” vintages from these sites are frequently blended into our Novitiate line of wines.   So what you get is a very flavorful and rich wine that won’t have quite the same silky, satiny texture as the barrels that make the cut to go into a Testarossa labeled wines. However, you get them at a relatively inexpensive price.  Plus for each bottle of Novitiate wine you buy, we make a donation to the retirement fund for the old Jesuit priests and brothers who worked in our winery many decades ago.