Why We Don't Have Many Cadenza Red Wines Among Our Current Offerings

 If there was one question I was asked more than any other during our December Cadenza wine club pickup, it was this: "why aren't there more reds?"  Believe me, it's not a fun question to answer.  I understand that most of you probably signed up for the club based on the red wines that were promised.   

It's probably best for me to try to explain the past few years, and in order to do that, I should talk about our vineyards some more. Here's the map.

Map of Cadenza Vineyards in Brogue PA

We have four red Bordeaux varieties planted here.  Theoretically, I could see us making no more than six wines in a perfect year: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Bridge, Cadenza.  That said, none of the past few years have been perfect.

2017 was the first time we had all four varieties online at the same time.  And we released three wines (Merlot, Bridge, Cadenza).  This was a great harbinger of things to come (or so I thought.)  Given the fact that this was mostly the first harvest from these baby wines, the future looks extremely promising.

In 2018, disaster struck twice.  First in the form of a wet and cool summer which brought disease-pressure and all sorts of bad things.  Harvest weather was decent, but the fruit we brought in was scarce and of only average quality.  All the red wines were declassified to the Allegro label.  (You can find them in the 2018 Allegro Duet.)  

Pile of vines to be burned

At the end of 2018--with the vineyard soaked and the roots drowning in water, we had a cold snap in November.  Under normal circumstances, the vines would have laughed at 15 degrees, but a temperature that cold that early with their feet so wet was disastrous.  We lost around four thousand of the ten thousand vines we had planted.  To add insult to injury, all the primary buds on the surviving Cabernet Franc vines were dead meaning we would get zero grapes from them in 2019.  The Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon faired only slightly better.  

With that winter, 2019 was basically finished before it even started.  Through it all, the Petit Verdot was almost bullet-proof.  The 2019 Petit Verdot along with a few other small lots became the 2019 Bridge.

2020 came with its own host of issues.  The vines that had not had to work as hard in 2019 due to the budkill we had were now full of vigor and set a massive crop.  The Cabernet Franc and Merlot wines were nice, but again mostly declassified to the Allegro label.  There's good chance we'll get a varietal 2020 Petit Verdo, though, that we will hope to bottle in early 2022.

As for 2021, it's too soon to get really excited, but the quality across all four is back closer to where 2017 was.  The Cabernet Franc and Merlot seem to be the standouts for once.  In early 2023 I'm hoping that we'll have at least three new reds to show the world.

We're going to start re-planting the vineyard this coming spring.  We have about two thousand vines ordered to start the process.  It'll be a long re-building couple years.

Thank you all for your patience through these times. I know you all signed up for all sorts of red wines, and I hope to be able to deliver those to you in the coming years.  In the meantime, if you feel like helping out planting, feel free to contact me in April.  We'll have to do it all manually this time rather than using tractors and lasers.  Again, insult to injury.....