A brief history
The quality of a good wine starts at the source, with the grapes. We carefully choose the vineyards we take our grapes from, using only the best fruit from each. Within the vineyards, we select the blocs with vines that are at least 7 years old. Berry size is managed to keep the fruit as small as possible - resulting in high quality fruit that is ripe, rich, and with wonderful tannin. To assure the fruit is to our standards, we crop the canopy to assure even ripening and reduce the likelihood of sunburn. Excess fruit is dropped several times during the growing seasons, as is any fruit that is not ripening properly at varaison. The result is a yield of about 2 - 2.5 tons of fruit per acre.
After the fruit has reached the appropriate Brix and acidity, the winemakers taste it constantly to determine when it is perfectly ripe and ready to pick. In some cases, blocs have to be picked on more than one occasion. We always de-stem and place the fruit in tanks for fermentation immediately after they are picked - The Grapes Never Sit.
Our wines are handled gently and with the utmost precision during fermentation, resulting in optimal fermentation to produce the highest quality wines possible. After fermentation is complete, the wine is clean, fragrant, and full of fruit. We use a very light press - less than have the pressure used by most wineries. The free run wine is taken off and kept separate until blending, resulting in tannins that are round and wonderful, rather than harsh. Only light filtering, if any, is performed prior to bottling.
