Current Release

In our Estate Vineyards

Wine­mak­ing is a cycle, and as we enter the new year the cycle con­tin­ues with prun­ing all 150 acres of Beck­men grapevines. Our crew pass­es through both of our vine­yards twice: once for the ini­tial pre-prune of the canopy, clear­ing out the tall canes and brush, and sec­ond for the crit­i­cal final prune cut. Prun­ing is a very impor­tant task that sets up the crop size on each vine for the year ahead. Each bud we leave behind will hope­ful­ly pro­duce a cou­ple of grape clus­ters come spring. A lot of oth­er fac­tors will affect the crop size through­out the long grow­ing sea­son, but this is the first step in set­ting the stage for the 2021 vintage.

The grapevines may be bare and dor­mant, but our cov­er crops are grow­ing beau­ti­ful­ly due to the good rain­fall we received in the begin­ning of 2021. Every Decem­ber, we plant an organ­ic cov­er crop between the rows of grapevines as a nat­ur­al way to feed and add nitro­gen back into our soil. The crop is a mix of grass and legumes, includ­ing climb­ing peas, vetch, and beans, which we will con­tin­ue to grow until they start to flower. After flow­er­ing, we will mow each row and run a disc to incor­po­rate the ben­e­fi­cial, organ­ic plant mate­ri­als into the soil. The legumes have nitro­gen fix­ing nod­ules on their root sys­tems, which improves the health of our soil the most nat­ur­al way possible. 

Inside our Winery

We are gear­ing up for bot­tling sea­son! We will be bot­tling dif­fer­ent wines for two or three days every month for the next six months. A lot of work must hap­pen before a wine goes into the bot­tle. We are busy fin­ish­ing blends — some­times a blend of one vari­etal from dif­fer­ent parts of the vine­yard or some­times a blend of dif­fer­ent vari­etals — emp­ty­ing bar­rels, fill­ing tanks, and fin­ish­ing wines. Our wines are bot­tled via a mobile bot­tling line, so if you see a semi-truck parked next to the win­ery you know what we are up to! 

Bar­rel man­age­ment is also an impor­tant task dur­ing the win­ter months. We taste every bar­rel of wine, mak­ing sure the wines are devel­op­ing well as they age and mature. We check the sec­ondary fer­men­ta­tion (mal­o­lac­tic fer­men­ta­tion, where mal­ic acid is con­vert­ed to lac­tic acid) which hap­pens after the pri­ma­ry (alco­hol) fer­men­ta­tion. This sec­ondary fer­men­ta­tion enhances the tex­ture and feel of the wine, adding a rounder, creami­er qual­i­ty. All of our red wines will go through this sec­ondary fer­men­ta­tion, but we inhib­it it in most of our white wines.

Visit Our Working Winery Estate

We are safe­ly open for out­door wine tast­ings and gaze­bo reser­va­tions by appoint­ment only. The win­ter months are a beau­ti­ful time to vis­it our vine­yard, as the lush green grass­es and cov­er crops grow to almost the same height as our dor­mant vines.

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 Fri­day — Sun­day and Wednes­days for Wine Club mem­bers only. We look for­ward to see­ing you soon!