Vintage Factors

For our 40th anniversary harvest, we naturally wished for a vintage worthy of celebrating in bottle for many years. We are glad to report that our grapes from 2016 met or exceeded these hopes, but as the growing season commenced, this suddenly looked to be impossible. As you may have heard, total yields were sharply diminished by April frosts and heavy rains through June. Yet we undertook our customary manual crop reductions, to produce the highest quality fruit. What we kept on the vine was then rewardd by weather of ideal fruit development in the final two months of the season. From early August and extending deep into September, the vineyard enjoyed lavish sunlight, heat, and dry conditions. The whites show beautiful aromatics, refreshing acidity, and fine structure for aging, especially in Viognier.