Starting the grape sorting process

At Your ServiceChoose your level of winemaking involvement

Be as involved in the winemaking process as your circumstances – where you live, available time, etc – allow, and your interest suggests.  Whatever your level of involvement, we’ll guide you every step of the way and take care of all the details.  Great wine, personalized winemaking education, and relaxed fun.  What could be better?

Fruit Sourcing

Got grapes?  No problem.  Need grapes?  No problem.  With our 30-year history in the Napa Valley, we’ve got great ‘insider’ connections enabling us to secure premium grapes from some of Napa Valley’s best vineyards.  From King Cabernet Sauvignon to Royal Roussanne, your wish is our command.

Harvest, Crush & Fermentation

We work hand-in-hand with the growers to ensure grapes are harvested at optimum brix and maturity.  Incoming grapes are then hand-sorted so that only the ripest, most intact berries make it to our crusher/destemmer.  Fermenters are selected to accommodate your production.  We’ll provide the specific yeast found to be best suited for your variety, or you can request a different yeast if you like.

After fermentation, we gently press the red must in our pneumatic membrane press.  (White wines are de-stemmed and pressed prior to fermentation, and, for small lots fermented in barrels – sur lies upon request.)

Barrel Aging

From the press, the wine is carefully transferred into 60-gallon barrels for aging, and red wines are racked twice for superior clarity. The type of oak used in barrel aging can have a profound effect on your wine.  We can choose a barrel for you (including new or neutral, French or American, toast level, etc) or we can guide you through the selection process and purchase the barrel for you at our cost.  If a new barrel is preferred for the finished wine, we offer guidance in the selection process and will purchase it for you at our cost. There’s no extra charge for barrel storage.  Come on in and taste your wine to see how it’s coming along.

Blending and Finishing

Blending is something you definitely don’t want to miss.  Three parts art, one part science, it’s often that small fraction of another varietal that separates the ho-hum cab from the luscious, complex, deep, rich CAB.  If you choose to blend rather than producing 100% Cab for example, the blending session typically takes place a few months prior to bottling. If you’ve only produced one barrel, we can provide blending components for an additional fee.

Bottling

To ensure stability, most wines are filtered prior to bottling.  A crucial part of the process, we take great care to oversee the transfer of your precious wine from barrel to tank to bottle using our state-of-the-art bottling line.

Label Design & Licensing

Who hasn’t dreamed of being a label designer?  OK, not everyone. Strict government regulations dictate the placement of key info on front and back labels, type size, warning statement, etc . (Much of it dates back to the repeal of Prohibition…)  As experts in the field of Federal Certificate of Label Approvals (COLA) from the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), we’re happy to help you designers out there with label compliance and submission as part of our service. For those of you for whom label design is not the end all and be all, we have a regulation-ready wine label waiting for your brand name, vineyard designation and wine variety. 

Ongoing Consultation

Throughout the entire winemaking process, we invite you to stay involved. We’re working on a special section of our web site where you’ll be able to track the progress of your wine and ask questions of your ‘consulting winemaker’, so stay tuned.