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

 

Wrapped - Harvest 2025!

Myles' Last Harvest Update - 10/21/25: 

“That’s a wrap!
 
On October 14th, our final fruit was ready to be picked, so we gathered up the team for one final pick day and brought in the Nebbiolo. The sunny and cool days in early October helped to bring the Nebbiolo into a beautiful stage of ripeness where it is already expressing fruity and floral notes with a vibrant acidity to match. We will ferment the Nebbiolo over the course of the next few weeks, and then it will age in barrel for nearly two years!
 
While we awaited the Nebbiolo to be ready we have finished transferring all the Pinot Noirs to barrel, where they will soon begin Malolactic Fermentation and age until they are ready to be blended and bottled.
 
The Chardonnays have been slowly working through primary fermentation and are continuing to do so! Since all the Chardonnay is fermented spontaneously and held at cooler temperatures, the fermentation takes months to complete. This long process adds layers of complexity to the wines and allows for their truest self-expression. 
 
With the final fruit in the cellar, we have been doing our final deep clean on all our crush equipment in preparation of putting it away until Harvest 2026! Over the next few months, we will continue to watch all the wines from this vintage and prepare them for bottling as the appropriate timing dictates. 
 
Harvest is a wonderful time of the year; filled with excitement, anticipation, and plenty of hard work. We had an amazing crew this year who have all played a critical role in helping to produce the wonderful wines to come. We had incredible people helping us who, by sorting fruit and cleaning equipment, made a notable positive impact this harvest. Thank you to you all!”

Cheers to a successful 2025 vintage!
Myles

Last Fruit Standing

Myles' Cellar Update - 9/23/25 - 10/1/25: 

"In mid-September, after a brief weather-driven slowdown in ripening of the Pinot Noir, the vines brought the fruit right into the perfect zone of ripeness. We’ve harvested the remaining Pinot Noir off the property, the Pinot Meunier, and the Popsanbro (White Pinot) fruit. Just like the Chardonnay, all the different blocks of Pinot Noir are kept separate throughout fermentation and barrel aging, allowing us to continue learning about the vineyard and have as many options as possible during assemblage. Now the focus shifts firmly into the cellar, where we will continue to manage the fermentations and barrel down the wines as they finish up!
 
We celebrated the ‘Last Fruit’ with a single pick from Block 5 Wädenswil, which, due to its small tonnage crop, we have treated in a special way, more to come on that later. The only remaining fruit on the property is the Nebbiolo. We have been watching the block, allowing it to continue hanging and ripening. Due to its much later ripening nature, looser clusters, and thicker skins, we are able to allow the vines to continue ripening the fruit through more inclement weather than Pinot Noir would typically allow. We are still anticipating our final pick of the season to be ready in the earlier part of this month.

Our sparkling base wine, which was the first to be harvested, has completed alcoholic fermentation and is now topped up in barrel, awaiting tirage bottling in May. It still has a long journey ahead of it before it will be released, but it is showing the beginning structure for a beautiful and serious sparkling Blanc de Blancs.
 
This week, the Pinot Noirs are finishing primary fermentation, we have begun draining the wine off the skins, gently pressing the skins, and transferring it all to barrel! Just like with the Chardonnay, we are keeping everything meticulously separate throughout draining, pressing, and barreling down. As the wines are heading to barrel, we are getting our first glimpse at what qualities the final wines of 2025 will have, and boy, are we excited!!"

Cheers!
Myles

Chardonnay & Pinot Noir Have Arrived!

Myles' Cellar Update 9/9/2025:

With the last week of August providing warm days and cool nights, our Estate Chardonnay came into just the right amount of ripeness the first week of September, arriving in beautiful condition with a lovely showing of aromatic precursors for the finished wine and as quickly as we began, we finished harvesting our Chardonnay, last week!

Our Chardonnay plantings on the Estate are split into many smaller blocks, which enables us to pick each Chardonnay block separately. By picking each block separately, we can target the optimal level of ripeness for each section and keep them as separate as possible through fermentation and aging, so that we can continue to learn how our vineyard grows Chardonnay and the many differences between all of the blocks. In addition to the learning process along the way, keeping the Chardonnays separate gives us the maximum number of blending options when we begin assemblage of the final wines. 
 
Our Pinot Noir pick also started the first week of September! First up, we brought in four tons of Dijon Clone 667 and 777 from the Flanerie Vineyard in the Ribbon Ridge AVA that will become its own blend. We also picked two of the quickest to ripen Pinot Noir blocks from the Estate and have captured an exciting moment of ripeness where they are showing impressive intensity and liveliness at the same time. After several spells of warm and dry weather through August into early September, we finally got a rain event and a cool down, so we did not harvest any Pinot Noir last week. The vines took this as a chance to pause, catch their breath, and then carry on with ripening their fruit. This week, we picked the majority of our Estate's Pinot Noir fruit, with the final pick scheduled for this coming Monday, the 22nd.
 
Throughout harvest so far, the team has found a fun and sometimes goofy cohesiveness. I have noticed wonderful camaraderie and a willingness to lend a hand whenever is necessary. As much as harvest is about the fruit and making wine, the people who make the wine are incredibly important. Having a lively crew who is having fun with the process makes it better for us all and makes better wine!

Cheers!
Myles

2025 Harvest Begins!

8/31/2025 - The past week in the cellar:

Harvest has begun! Last week, we started with sparkling base wine picks from our Estate's Chardonnay Blocks 13 and 4. The fruit was in beautiful condition and tasted wonderful! Our sparkling base was whole cluster pressed with minimal skin contact and sent off to neutral barrels to ferment.
 
We also picked our still Rosé of Pinot Noir last week from Block 7, which is all Pommard clone. It was also in wonderful condition and tasted to have the precursors for delicious fruity and floral notes in the final wine! It has been whole cluster pressed to tank where it is undergoing fermentation in mostly stainless steel tanks.
 
Along with processing those grapes we have been cleaning and preparing all week for more picking which began today with the first of our still Chardonnay fruit. Surveying the vineyard for optimal ripeness for our Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Nebbiolo will be a major focus in the days (and weeks) to come!

Cheers!
Myles