"Secrets" of our wine's high quality

We begin winemaking each year with several key advantages:

• Our winery is located in the vineyard. Fifteen minutes after picking, our grapes are in the winery. That protects high quality.
• Our small size and 37 years’ experience growing wine grapes here ensure consistent control over grape quality.
• The only grapes used in our wine are those we grow right here in our vineyard.
• Members of our vineyard team have been with us for close to 30 years. They’re very good at what they do. Quality control in winemaking is a magical combination of agriculture, weather, science, art, and people. We are blessed with and confident in the “human factor” here at Hafner Vineyard.
• Our winemaker has known our vineyard from its very beginning, from planting forward, year in and year out.
• We have made wine here for 23 years, concentrating exclusively on Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, the world’s foremost white and red wines.

Ultimately, winemaker Parke Hafner makes the call to begin the harvest. He and vineyard manager Rafael Jimenez have been out in the vineyard tasting grapes for flavor and maturity. (Go to Growing Grapes.) When they are satisfied, the harvester goes to work and the grapes go right to the winery.

First come the Chardonnay grapes because they ripen earliest. Only Chardonnay grapes are used in Hafner Chardonnay wines. Stems are removed to eliminate their harsh tannins.

The grapes go directly into the presses for gentle squeezing, separating their sweet, aromatic juice from the skins, then cooling overnight. Yeast is added to the juice and fermentation begins, converting the juice’s sugar into alcohol.

Half the Chardonnay is fermented in temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks in the winery. The other half is pumped to our wine caves to ferment in small French oak barrels.

The temperature-controlled wine retains more of the grapes' citrus and pear aromas. The barrel-fermented Chardonnay has more subtle fruit aromas plus oak's toasted nut and sweet vanilla flavors.

Next comes the second or malolactic fermentation. It converts the grapes’ malic acid into softer lactic acid.

Our main Chardonnay is a blend of the tank-fermented (60%) and barrel-fermented (40%) wines. Forty percent is also malolactic-fermented, and the entire blend is aged 10 months in oak. Bottled in August, it is aged in bottles for 13 months, then released to you at two years of age, mature and ready to be enjoyed.

Our Reserve Chardonnay is all barrel-fermented and 100% malolactic-fermented. It is aged in French oak barrels for 15 months. Every two weeks the lees (grape and yeast fragments) are stirred up to add complexity to the wine’s bouquet and creaminess to the palate. The Reserve is released with 32 months of age, ready for you to drink and savor.

Stored at a stable temperature, both our main and Reserve Chardonnays can be aged for another two to three years after their initial release. (See Winemaker’s Notes for more information on each vintage.)

Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, unlike the Chardonnay, are fermented with their skins. After the grapes are crushed, they go directly into our stainless steel tanks. During fermentation, juice is sprinkled over the skins that have risen to the tank’s top. This draws color and flavors from the skins into the wine.

Fermentation is complete in about 12 days. We allow the skins to remain with the wine for eight more days to further soften the wine. A trip to the wine caves follows for 21 months of aging in small oak barrels. During its first Winter, the Cabernet completes malolactic fermentation to make the wine even softer.

Bottled in August after almost two years in oak, our Cabernet spends the next two and a half years in bottles. It is released in its fifth year. Now it is soft, full-bodied, ready to be enjoyed right away or aged at home for several more years. (See Winemaker’s Notes for a review of recent vintages of Hafner Cabernet.)

We age our wines longer than most other California wineries. We are committed to selling our wines only when they are mature and ready to be enjoyed. The star of our commitment to well-aged wines is the yearly release of a 10-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon in magnums.

Did you know? Topping is a key to any wine’s success. Wine evaporates through the pores of the wood, so every two weeks we open each of our 700 barrels and add wine to fill the barrel back up. As we pour wine into each barrel, air and wine are splashed together. This brief interaction with air allows the wine to develop and mature its flavors.

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