2020 was an interesting year with many unforeseen and some foreseeable developments. Our Vineyard Vineyard. In the foreseeable category, we enjoyed our third harvest. Mother Nature was kinder than she was in 2018, but not by much. We didn't have too much rain (see 2018). We had too little. The presence of too much sun, some drought, and too little rainfall produced crop losses in our western-most vineyard blocks (Merlot), although much less severe than crop losses incurred in 2018. We survived largely unscathed by early season frost and hail. And, so far, the 2020 vintage is a very good one. We are preparing for a crisp, fruit forward, white/rose wine bottling in February 2021. Our reds have very good...
Apologies for our tardy posts. 2018 was our first significant vineyard harvest and most of our 2018 wines are now estate wines made from our fruit. But 2018 was a challenging year. We had much less than average sunshine and much more than average rainfall during the growing season. Harvest was reduced, disease pressure was up, and sprays to control disease were more frequent. Total gross harvest for our young vineyard and our leased vineyards was about 8 tons. We lost about 4-5 tons of our Cabernet Sauvignon to grape berry split and rot (too much absorbed rainfall). Nevertheless, we made 5 varietal wines and 3 blended wines. Several have won medals in local and state-wide competitions. We were surprised...
It has been quite some time since we posted an update; no excuses, but we've been very busy in 2018. Some highlights follow: Opening. We hired our first employee, Jen Deal, our tasting room wizard. With a lot of hard work by Jen, and our family and friends, and preceded by a soft opening for friends, families and contractors, the week before, we opened our tasting room to the public in 2018 on July 28. Crowds were beyond expectations, business was brisk, reviews, for both our wines and our service, were very kind, and we are very grateful. The generosity of our customers, friends, and family is humbling. Competitions. Prior to opening, in December...
Fourth leaf refers to the number of times our vines have broken bud and leafed out. This will be our fourth leaf in 2018 and our vines will have been in our soil for three full years. A milestone that promises better fruit, better harvest, and wine from our own vineyard (in addition to our leased vineyard). That's what this has been about. Getting from that to this. As I write this post, I look back and forward. Since our post mid-2017, we've blended and bottled our first red wines, a 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon and two 2016 Bordeaux style reds, one Cabernet Sauvignon heavy (for a heartier red wine) and one Merlot heavy (for a lighter red wine). We also had...
Our last post, in January 2017, described our first red and white wine production at our (interim) winery from leased vineyard fruit. This past week, we bottled our first wines, two whites, a Viognier named after my late mother, Alma, and a Viognier-Petit Manseng blend, named after my mother-in-law, Patricia. Both women preferred off-dry whites. Our first bottles are dry whites. I hope Pat will try some of her namesake wine. If my mother could, she’d try some as well. I expect she’s looking down, smiling, and musing to herself, “where’s the Riesling?” Bottling is a bit of work. Here’s our process: before bottling, we lab tested the wines for final alcohol, acidity, dryness, and other factors. We also did...
