Originally the idea was to plant about half an acre of grapes in the back of our property because I love the clean and neat look of a vineyard. Upon clearing and grading the property, it became evident to me that half an acre was simply not big enough. I could barely see the back of the property from my deck, so the process of clearing took on a whole new meaning. I decided to move the vineyard closer and closer and closer to the house until we were surrounded on the north, east and south side of the property. In all we planted 2500 vines on about 3 acres of our 5 acre property. It was wonderful! We had our Marsnne Grapes, and we had our Grenache Grapes! The vineyard looked beautiful and we were on our way!
The plan was to grow and sell our grapes. I was not interested in processing wine. I didn't drink wine and I had no wine in the house except for one bottle of Grenache which was a gift from my vineyard manager, Ken Musso. I was totally obsessed with our vines! I watched them every day, talked to them and made a rule that there could never be any stress in the vineyard because I am a firm believer that the grapes are sensitive to our emotions and stress was not good for the grapes.
In that first year, our vines did very well and we were convinced that we would have a small crop in 2012. In the meantime, Jim came up to see what I was doing with regard to the vineyard and when he found out that I only had one bottle of wine in the house he said, "Barbara, if you are going to be in the wine business then you should probably buy some wines to develop your palette." I immediately went out and bought 100 bottles of various wines, a giant wine refrigerator, corkscrews, glasses and everything else that I could find pertaining to wine.
Our first harvest was in 2013 . We had too many beautiful grapes to throw away but not enough to sell, so we decided to make some wine. That was when I first met our wine maker who quickly became our good friend Andy Gaudy. After his counsel we bought the appropriate barrels and started the process. When we were ready to bottle our Marsanne, it was a very exciting day! We bottled 65 cases of Marsanne which by the way was really really good! We still had no real plan but we realized that everyone who tasted our wine loved our wine so on a whim I entered it into a competition for Rhone Varietals. We were awarded a Silver Medal with 88 Points and I was hooked! It was time to go into the wine business! Our Grenache was later accepted with similar enthusiasm. It was at that point we decided to move forward and bottle all of our wines!
That is how it all started and I am so thankful for all of the support I have received from my family and friends! I do ask myself, "what was I thinking." I was thinking that with our grapes, the sky is the limit!
Stay tuned!
