A California Winery Blog

Bruce and his whole crew are at the Lafond Winery this week. They are readying most of 2007’s red wine for bottling. First they spend several days tasting and evaluating each barrel and each lot. This is the final cut.

Which wines merit to be bottled as single vineyard or single clone wines. Over the years we have learnt which parts of the vineyard and which clones produces consistently outstanding wines, but there are surprises. For the past few years we have been experimenting with tying each individual cane to prevent canopy leaves from shading the fruit.

Obviously, a very slow and costly process, but with the results of the 2007 vintage now in, we will be doing a lot more of it in the future. Most, if not all of the vines where this was done, will end up in our special limited bottling. Both Winemaker Bruce McGuire and David Lafond were impressed by the results.

Photos show the crew at work and if not at play, at least at the table.