It's All About The Wine

As we slowly perform our final pruning tasks in the vineyard, doing some last minute weedwacking, and making plans for what we want to do in regards to fungicide spraying and fertilizing, we often are too concerned with how we want this coming season to perform than the final results of this past year.

Spring not only brings on bud break, which is apt to be really early this year, but it corresponds with the bottling of the 2016 harvest. We try to get it done in March and April; after that it starts to become warm in the winery which may negatively affect the wine. Diane, who has the primary winemaking responsibilities, is doing a balancing act as to how to apply all the fluids we have in the tanks. From what is still there,there is nearly enough to make 600 more cases of wine. Some of our prior year wines are running low or have run out. Others have been a rousing success and have to be replaced or backed up.

She recently released two wines that are starting to have a nice customer following, even after only a few weeks. Our Petit Verdot, another one of our red Bordeauxs, is an inky red color, more body than our award-winning Cabernet Franc, with the dark cherry, red currant, and spice notes. Those that fell in love with our Cabernet Sauvignon have now made this their new favorite. This is our first vintage year for this grape.

  The  other wine that we released just last week is our new Hog Island Sweet White. Over the last 2 years we have offered it's counterpart, a Hog Island Sweet Red, which is very port-like with 3% residual sugar. We sold out of the 2014 and are now in the 2015 vintage year. The "White" is a blend of Seyval Blanc and Scuppernong, which is an American grape, quite sweet in nature and when the time comes to harvest it, it is the size of a ping-pong ball. The Seyval Blanc "tames" the Scuppernong, which is a cultivated muscadine. The Hog Island Sweet White is more in line with the local's preference for sweet wines, just as they like their sweet tea. If one had to find a comparison, I would say it is like a Moscato, with 10% residual sugar.

So, as we head into the 2017 season, our motivation is that the quality of our wines start in the vineyard. The healthier our fruit, we believe, will be positively reflected in our wines.