Our Approach to Winemaking
We try to leave the wine alone as much as possible, not meddling, not adding, not fining away. We spend most of our time watching, listening, tasting, smelling, and asking lots of questions. Winemaking is more surprise and wonder than artifice. All of those trillions of chemical reactions and all of those tiny single-celled organisms do the real transformation. The result is invariably richer and more interesting than anything we could have planned.
We hand sort all of our grapes, red and white. We do not sulfur at reception. The things we try to manage in the cellar are oxygen, temperature, and cleanliness. We don’t use single-strain commercial yeast. Instead, the many different native strains of yeast that occur naturally in the vineyards and the cellar compete and contribute to the wine’s characteristics. We favor wild, unique, and interesting over cultured and predictable. These native fermentations are in fact how most of winemaking has been practiced throughout history.
Most importantly, for the grapes to be delicious and laden with the potential to express the particularity of their soils and climate, they must be farmed by knowing hands. If they arrive dull then we’re out of luck. So we rely on our farmers who have farmed their vineyards for many seasons. They have fine-tuned their approaches to each site based on its needs. They know how to grow good wine grapes. They do most of the work.
The first wines we really fell for were the simple, weird, light, wonderful natural wines being made in France’s Loire Valley, notably cabernet franc and chenin blanc. We try to make California wines inspired by the Loire, but true to the climate, soils, and abundant sunshine of California. Since we want our wines to be light, fresh and have mild alcohol levels, we pick while the sugar levels are still low and the acid is still prominent. We aspire to make clean, honest, lively, delicious wines that are a joy to drink. We hope you like drinking them as much as we love making them.
We hand sort all of our grapes, red and white. We do not sulfur at reception. The things we try to manage in the cellar are oxygen, temperature, and cleanliness. We don’t use single-strain commercial yeast. Instead, the many different native strains of yeast that occur naturally in the vineyards and the cellar compete and contribute to the wine’s characteristics. We favor wild, unique, and interesting over cultured and predictable. These native fermentations are in fact how most of winemaking has been practiced throughout history.
Most importantly, for the grapes to be delicious and laden with the potential to express the particularity of their soils and climate, they must be farmed by knowing hands. If they arrive dull then we’re out of luck. So we rely on our farmers who have farmed their vineyards for many seasons. They have fine-tuned their approaches to each site based on its needs. They know how to grow good wine grapes. They do most of the work.
The first wines we really fell for were the simple, weird, light, wonderful natural wines being made in France’s Loire Valley, notably cabernet franc and chenin blanc. We try to make California wines inspired by the Loire, but true to the climate, soils, and abundant sunshine of California. Since we want our wines to be light, fresh and have mild alcohol levels, we pick while the sugar levels are still low and the acid is still prominent. We aspire to make clean, honest, lively, delicious wines that are a joy to drink. We hope you like drinking them as much as we love making them.