Futures Begins: Experience our Futures Program at Home

Every fall for the last decade and a half, we have opened our cel­lar doors for a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to taste a lim­it­ed selec­tion of our small pro­duc­tion red wines still aging in oak bar­rels dur­ing our annu­al Futures pro­gram. Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, we have decid­ed to change the Futures tast­ing pro­gram. We still want our Wine Club mem­bers and sup­port­ers to enjoy this tru­ly unique expe­ri­ence even though they can­not trav­el to our estate winery. 

This year, the six Futures wines will be avail­able in a tast­ing kit which can be deliv­ered to the 35 states where we cur­rent­ly ship. (The tast­ing kits are sold out as of Octo­ber 15^th, 2020.) Each kit will include 50ml sam­ples of the six dif­fer­ent wines, each wine’s spe­cif­ic wine­mak­ing details, our winemaker’s tast­ing notes, and an invi­ta­tion to par­tic­i­pate in a vir­tu­al Futures tast­ing. The vir­tu­al tast­ings will be host­ed on Zoom by our Tast­ing Room Man­ag­er, Neil Red­mond, offer­ing you the chance to taste the wines along with a small group of peo­ple and ask us your ques­tions. In past years, we have found that the in-depth dis­cus­sions had dur­ing Futures tast­ings lend a new per­spec­tive on the wines, gen­er­at­ing a deep appre­ci­a­tion you can savor when­ev­er you open your Futures wines. 

The great­est ben­e­fit to cus­tomers who pre-order dur­ing the Futures pro­gram is the abil­i­ty to pur­chase these lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion wines at the low­est price that they will be offered, at spe­cial dis­counts of up to 40%. Since Futures buy­ers are promis­ing to pur­chase an unfin­ished prod­uct, there is some risk involved as the wines will change dur­ing their last few months of aging. But, with any risk, there is great reward as the wines have his­tor­i­cal­ly been some the best that we have pro­duced, and sev­er­al of them will sell out dur­ing the Futures pro­gram. Futures buy­ers will not be billed for the wines until they are shipped after bot­tling lat­er this fall and next spring.

The red wines in the Futures pro­gram have been aging in bar­rel any­where from 10 months to 30 months depend­ing on the type of wine being pro­duced. Dur­ing this aging peri­od, the wines will evolve as the gen­tle process of slow oxi­da­tion soft­ens the tan­nins over time. Addi­tion­al­ly, if aged in new oak, the bar­rels will impart an extra dimen­sion of fla­vor and com­plex­i­ty into the wine, which takes time to inte­grate into the wine. Thiev­ing wine from a bar­rel allows our Wine Club mem­bers and long­time sup­port­ers to taste a wine that is not quite fin­ished and thus expe­ri­ence a whole new appre­ci­a­tion of our wine­mak­ing process. They can dis­cern where a wine is head­ed, and for those with skilled palates or those who have been tast­ing our bar­rel sam­ples for years, they can gain an idea of how the wine will taste once bottled. 

The wines select­ed for the Futures pro­gram are the most excep­tion­al and low­est pro­duc­tion wines in our port­fo­lio. These wines are sourced from the high­est qual­i­ty grapes grown in our best vine­yard blocks, craft­ed from free run juice or gen­tle bas­ket press­es, and aged in pre­mi­um bar­rels by notable coop­ers. Pre-order­ing dur­ing Futures guar­an­tees access to these wines, as sev­er­al of the wines are ful­ly allo­cat­ed upon release to our Wine Club and some are exclu­sive­ly sold as Futures wines. 

The six wines includ­ed in the 2020 Futures pro­gram are:

• 2019 PMV Grenache
• 2019 Estate Grenache
• 2019 PMV Clone 1 Syrah
• 2018 PMV Block Six Syrah
• 2018 Purisi­ma Red Wine (avail­able only dur­ing Futures)
• 2018 TLB

If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact Tay­lor Hart at taylor@​beckmenvineyards.​com or call­ing 805−688−8664 exten­sion 211. We look for­ward to shar­ing our bar­rel sam­ples with you!