Current Release

In our Estate Vineyards

The most excit­ing time of year has arrived… har­vest! Quar­ter 3 is extreme­ly busy for us in both of our vine­yards — the cer­ti­fied bio­dy­nam­ic, 125 acre Purisi­ma Moun­tain Vine­yard in Bal­lard Canyon AVA and our 25 acre Thomas and Judith Beck­men Estate Vine­yard in Los Olivos Dis­trict AVA. In prepa­ra­tion of har­vest, we have been focus­ing on canopy man­age­ment, trel­lis posi­tion­ing, hedg­ing the vines, and leaf pulling to help with dis­ease pres­sure and to expose the fruit to sun­light. The com­bi­na­tion of all these efforts will help improve the ripeness and over­all qual­i­ty of the grapes as we enter the final stage of the year, the ripen­ing phase. 

The grapes have near­ly all gone through verai­son as we write this let­ter. Verai­son is that beau­ti­ful tran­si­tion from hard green berries to soft, ripe green (for white wines) and red (for red wines) berries. Each of our 10 grape vari­eties mature at dif­fer­ent times and at dif­fer­ent speeds, but one thing is cer­tain for all of them: birds and ground squir­rels know when the grapes are get­ting ripe. So, in order to pro­tect the grapes we have so care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed, we put nets over every row of grapevines to keep the pests away. We will then take sam­ples from each block, test­ing the Brix (sug­ar lev­els) of the grapes. Once the grapes reach a cer­tain Brix, it’s time to harvest!

Start­ing in Sep­tem­ber and through the dura­tion of har­vest, which usu­al­ly ends in mid-Novem­ber, our vine­yard crew will shift their sched­ules to pick the grapes at night. They pick the grapes by hand at night for two impor­tant rea­sons. First, it allows our crew to work in cool­er tem­per­a­tures, escap­ing the intense sun and the 90°F+ heat San­ta Bar­bara Coun­ty receives this time of year. Sec­ond­ly, it pre­serves the qual­i­ty of the grapes as they arrive to our win­ery. Tem­per­a­ture has a big effect on the fer­men­ta­tion process, so we want to start the wine­mak­ing process with cool, whole berries that haven’t split open.

Inside our Winery

In the win­ery, we blend­ed and racked the major­i­ty of 2019 red wines that are aging in oak bar­rels, cre­at­ing our final red wine blends from all of the var­i­ous lots. Our main focus, how­ev­er, has been prep­ping the win­ery, crush­pad, and bar­rel rooms for the upcom­ing har­vest sea­son. We spent time work­ing through our emp­ty bar­rels, check­ing the press and oth­er wine­mak­ing equip­ment, and deep clean­ing the 88 one and one-and-a-half ton fer­men­tors the grapes will be put into after they have been destemmed and sorted. 

Dur­ing har­vest, the grapes get deliv­ered to our win­ery crush­pad direct­ly from the vine­yard, usu­al­ly between 8am — 10am. We will process any­where from one ton per day to 20 tons per day, depend­ing on how much our vine­yard crew picked the night before. You will learn more about our wine­mak­ing phi­los­o­phy and process­es with the Quar­ter 4 release!

Visit Us & Experience Harvest Season

We are safe­ly open for out­door wine tast­ings and gaze­bo reser­va­tions by appoint­ment only. The months of Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber are an incred­i­ble time of year to vis­it our estate in Los Olivos. The vine­yard is full of beau­ti­ful grape clus­ters, and you will walk right past our win­ery crush­pad on your way to the tast­ing room so you’re bound to see our wine­mak­ing team in action. 

You can book your reser­va­tion on our web­site or call us at 805−688−8664 ext. 200. We are open for wine tast­ings and gaze­bo reser­va­tions Thurs­day — Sun­day and Wednes­days for Wine Club mem­bers only. We look for­ward to see­ing you soon!