As all winemakers know, winemaking starts in the vineyard. Having our winery at the southeast corner of our vineyard (30 feet away!) ensures that I’m out in the vineyard frequently. That, in my opinion, has a great impact on wine quality. Check out a short video of David and the machine harvester picking Malbec right in front of the winery.
Late July and early August days are filled with my least favorite job – bottling. It’s both stressful and monotonous. We bottle our Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Next Red (all from our Alexander Valley vineyard) in three extremely long weeks. Using our GoPro, we videoed the Chardonnay bottling. After watching one minute of it, we realized that it would be more interesting (and fun!) to see the process sped up (100x!).
Ludovic David, our intern in 1990 and now the General Manager at Chateau Marquis de Terme, came back to visit us and brought his son, Guillaume. Guillaume will go to the same university, Purpan, where his dad went and our interns are enrolled. While they were here, our 31st intern, Aymeric Laturelle, arrived. They are our interns past, present and future!
Aging wine can be intimidating, so we thought we’d provide our experience and perspective. Here is a “Wine Aging 101” to focus on our Alexander Valley Cabernet...so grab your pencil and a glass of Cabernet. We hope you enjoy this Q&A and we encourage you to send us any questions you might have. Cheers!
Early each year, we sit down at Mom and Dad’s dining room table overlooking the vineyard for our annual vertical tastings. Held over a couple of days, these tastings give us an opportunity to compare vintages, to evaluate how the wines are developing, to notice trends and assess the continuity of our winemaking style. We all have our bias: which vintage is our favorite, which is our least. And it is in these tastings when those biases can change.
