While the vines are dormant, we always pre-prune the vines. This means we go through the vineyard and cut the prior year's canes down to about 12 inches. This is the time of year when we get rain, so there is the ever-present danger of canker disease entering the cutting wounds. The disease moves slowly though, so any canker that enters into the wounds now will be cut off at final pruning. The goal is to allow a later final pruning which is close to budbreak and has the e

Announcing the releases of our 2018 Merlot and 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon. The Merlot was a wine we made from a buy of grapes from our neighbors at Zayante Vineyard. We created it in the event we wanted it for blending in our Cabernets, but we determined that our Cabernets needed no blending. We also started getting requests for Merlot, so it was easy to decide to bottle it. The 2018 Cabernet was showing itself to be complex and aromatic in the barrel, but after it went into