Our wines are made from our estate Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon, grown at our Speciale/D’Alessio vineyard in Templeton, California. We produce all our electrical energy from solar arrays; we shred and mulch our prunings back into our soil and use a low-level fungicide to control mildew. We hand-tend and hand-harvest our grapes, producing small amounts, just three to four pounds of fruit per plant. The Zin and Cab varieties are well suited to our terroir, hot days and cool nights with temperatures ranging from 100˚ – 55˚ F, early morning moisture, and afternoon breezes.

We hand pick our grapes, put them in small trays which hold about 25 pounds, and wheel them in little yellow wagons to Joseph’s pickup truck where the grapes are transferred into a small picking/fermenting bin. They are then quickly shuttled to a nearby winery.

Using plastic pitchforks and shovels, we hand transfer the just-picked fruit into a de-stemmer, which separates the berries from the cluster, and flows the grape juice, called “must,” into plastic fermenting bins. This immediate and gentle handling helps keep many of the berries whole. Some of the fermentation occurs under the skin of those whole berries and helps to produce a more intense and concentrated flavor. Two or three times a day, we punch the fermenting grapes down toward the bottom of their fermenting bins to allow the must to actively give off carbon dioxide and help the yeast convert the sugars into alcohol.

After fermentation is completed, the wine is pressed off the skins and seeds (using a bladder press) and transferred to oak barrels. The wine matures in new or once-used French and American oak barrels, medium to medium-plus toast, for 15-20 months, during which time we hand rack several times, removing the lees and topping off the barrels. Later, the wine may be selectively blended and allowed to rest for two or three months before being shipped to our club members.

 
We make our wines in a French style and design them to be even better five to eight years from harvest. So drink them now but lay down some for later. If you want some now, please vigorously decant before serving, or, if you don’t care to decant, remove the cork and leave uncorked for at least one hour. Our wine needs to be oxygenated (to “breathe”) because we make it with pronounced tannins. The tannins will allow it to age properly and develop even more complexities. If you lay down our wine, remember to keep it on its side in a consistently cool (55° – 57° F), humid and dark environment.