Welcome to the Hafner Vineyard blog. Here, we share what’s happening around the vineyard and winery, along with wine education, helpful wine tips, stories from our patrons, and some of our favorite things to do in Healdsburg and Sonoma County.
We hope you enjoy following along, and if there’s something you’d like to learn more about, we’d love to hear from you.
Send your ideas to kate@hafnervineyard.com
The Press

Rosé, to me, signals the advent of Spring, and after this year’s Winter rain (almost double our normal rainfall total), we are ready for Rosé. Parke and I discovered Rosé back in 1985 on a trip to ...
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Our Chardonnay Harvest is a wrap! We started picking on Tuesday, September 6th and finished just four days later. Each day at 4am, the vineyard team and I gathered at our shop, started the machine ...
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Benefits of an Estate Vineyard
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 opi...
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Driving through the Wine Country, you may notice some vineyards are void of any vegetation on the vineyard floor, while others have grass and weeds growing between the rows, and still others are a ...
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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 ...
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From December until March each year, our veteran vineyard crew tackles the tedious and time consuming job of pruning our 80,000 vines. While the vines are dormant, the crew removes most of last yea...
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Organize Your Wine for Holiday Festivities
This is the time of year when a tug-o-war occurs between “not enough time” and “wanting everything to be perfect”. The calendar for the next five weeks is filling quickly and happily! Bill and I a...
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When it comes to picking grapes, harvesting by machine is the best way in my book. It is incredibly efficient because the grapes go from being on the vine to crushed and into a chilled tank within ...
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Fermentation: Juice Becomes Wine
I am the lucky one during harvest – I spend my mornings sampling, measuring, tasting, evaluating each lot of Chardonnay to ensure that the fermentations are progressing well. Just after the grapes ...
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