The grapes are in. The wines have finished fermenting, and have
started to settle out and settle in to the next part of their journey to
bottling. It's the time of year when I get a bit contemplative about
the vines. Standing in our vineyard by myself has always been a refuge
for me from everything else going on.
2025 was by no means an easy year. It started on the right track and then went off the rails in June. August and the resulting dry weather saved us from what could have been disaster. The vintage had 2018 written all over it. The early tastings of the wines show a lot of promise, perhaps due to the lower cluster weights and the overall lower yields per vine.
What saved us this year was the fact that we started "layering" vines in the vineyard, making what could have been a 30% decrease in yields only a 15% decrease.
Here's what I mean: the Petit Verdot vine on the right--the "mother" vine--has a cane buried and being brought up out of the ground on the left --the "child" vine--allowing us to have a new vine with a partial yield this year. Of course, the new vine isn't grafted onto rootstock, thereby potentially exposing it to underground pests that it is susceptible to. That said, I have it on good (Bordeaux) authority that this works, and that a mother vine can have as many as four children vines!
This has been one of the bright spots in this otherwise difficult year for us. We already have marked the vines for layering next spring.
In the tasting room, we are still running at a bare minimum of inventory. I had to pull some past vintages from the library in order to make for a complete tasting experience for everyone. The old wines are the 2021 Merlot and Petit Verdot. Not really old by Cadenza standards, but definitely starting to come into their own.
WHITE WINES 2024 Albariño, 2024 Block Seven, 2023 Chardonnay
RED WINES 2021 Petit Verdot, 2021 Merlot, 2023 Resonance
As always, the library wines are only available for purchase by our wine club members. Hope you enjoy your next visit.
Cheers,
Carl
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