End of Year Sentiments

End of Year Update from Myles 12/18/2025: 

Since the end of harvest we have been watching all the wines slowly develop and begin to reveal more of what will be their final characteristics. We are still very early in the life spans of all the wines but they are already beginning to show incredible promise.

The Pinot Noirs are all finished with malolactic fermentation which happened spontaneously and rapidly in every lot. Some years wines have difficult times completing malolactic fermentation and some years it goes quite easily!

All the Chardonnays are still moving slowly along. Several lots are nearly finished with alcoholic fermentation and others are not quite finished yet. With the completion of alcoholic fermentation they too will begin malolactic fermentation which should continue well into the spring.

The Nebbiolo finished primary fermentation on skins and was transferred to barrel in November. It has since been quietly aging and we expect malolactic fermentation to commence this month.

With nearly all of the wines either finished or in slow progress this is the season in a winery when you really get to practice patience. All the wines are beginning to show inklings of their final character but with several months (or years) to go there is still a lot of evolution and maturation that will occur.

When we return from the holiday break, we will begin preparing for our spring bottling. At that time we will bottle the 2025 Rosé of Pinot Noir and the 2025 PopsanBro White Pinot Noir. The Rose is always our first release of a vintage and can be expected sometime in the late spring/early summer!

Outside the cellar there are some exciting developments happening in the vineyard! This fall as a team we planted our ‘Petting Zoo Vineyard’ which contains a mix of several Pinot Noir and Chardonnay clones. Just below the pergolas, this vineyard was planted with a few intentions in mind. It will be the vineyard that Aaron will continue his vine-to-glass vineyard series in; enabling the hands on series to start from the very beginning of planting a vineyard and carrying on throughout several growing seasons. It will also be a trial area for us to experiment with new and rarer clonal selections to see how they behave on this vineyard site. We are very excited about it for both reasons!

In addition to this new small block we will be grafting a few blocks to new clonal material and planting new vineyard blocks down by the winery. Both projects will continue through the summer and fall so more on those later! 

Cheers,

Myles