9 Pound Hammer

Happy Friday Friends,

For those of you who have consumed a decent amount of this blog, you know that it can be cyclical, and like the wine calendar, repetetive. This is the dormant time for the vines, we tend to bottle a decent amount of wine in the "off" season, and we clean up around the ranch.

I spent most of the day today building a chicken coop, and we look forward to welcoming our new flock in the coming days (photos to come). We also have some pretty major vineyard projects going on. As much as it pained us, we ripped out about 2 acres of vines this week. It was half of our original block of Estrella clone Syrah, planted in 2005 when, frankly, I was either at Saxum assisting Justin Smith in the cellar or commuting back and forth to Sony Pictures raising farming funds in the editorial studio. As a result of this preoccupation with survival, the vines did not have full-time attention and we lost a fair amount of them. They provided us with 11 vintages of great Syrah and we are grateful, but now is the time to replant and make the block stronger than ever.  We will diversify the block as we replant with Syrah, Mourvèdre, Cinsaut, Counoise, Roussanne and Clairette (we have our eyes set on an estate white wine when fortune and demand prevail).

Folks have been asking when we will ship our Spring release. It will be allocated in April and consist of 2019 James Berry Vineyard and 2018 MCA Cuvée and a few suprises to be announced soon. Standby.
 
If you would like to "Zoom Taste" with us, send an email. We are happy to oblige.

More updates and photos soon. Thank you for checking in.