Happy 2015 from the winery and vineyards! 
We have great hopes for the vintage and truly wish all of our wine club members and their families a safe and prosperous year.
We will begin setting the stage for our vintage in a few weeks when we start to prune our organic vines deep within the Cachagua Valley. Pruning the vines while they are dormant allows us to control how much fruit each vine will produce and is the first step in a long growing season.
Of course, there are many other factors that inevitably affect the amount and quality of the grapes that we end up with at harvest, but given the healthy amount of rain we received in early December 2014 – we are well on our way to a great year.
After three solid years of drought conditions, we have been blessed with rain and our soils are literally bursting with the deep green glow of a resurgent cover crop. This bodes well for our slumbering vines. A normal or above year rain fall helps to recharge our aquifers and water table. This will provide just enough water to get our precious vines and their fruit through the intensely hot growing season.
With vineyard work about to gear up, we have been concentrating on winery work these past few months. We are developing blends for our next vintage of Cachagua Cabernet Sauvignon – the 2013 and also racking out our 2013 Chardonnay and the 2012 Pinot Noir. Along with putting our 2014 wines to barrels so they may age and progress, we have also been topping our 2013 red wines which have already been in barrels for the past year. Since wines evaporate in the barrel over time, the topping we perform helps to keep the wines from spoiling but is a time consuming labor of love as we have over 700 barrels!
If you are a new wine club member, we thank you for joining us and hope you enjoy the wines we craft. We realize there are hundreds upon hundreds of clubs to be a part of and other wonderful wines and wineries to experience. We are proud that you have chosen us. Know that we will continue to make the best wines possible while continuing to grow all of our grapes organically.
This year will take you on an adventure and in four shipments you will experience intimately the wines we have grown, produced and bottled at our winery in the mountains. You also will have the opportunity to release ladybugs in our vineyards this summer, get your feet purple crushing our grapes at our annual harvest party in October and – if living locally – attend quarterly wine club parties at our tasting room.
Enjoying these benefits along with having some great wines is a perfect reason to be part of our wine club. Even more important is your support for organic farming. We appreciate your support as it fuels us to grow and make fantastic, good for you wines. Please enjoy this quarterly shipment and start your 2015 off right!
Cheers!
Rich Tanguay, Winemaker