Madroña Vineyards Blog

Over the last year or so, I'd say that the number one conversation I would have with people in the tasting area of our winery had to do with the state of the wine industry. There had been so much coverage of the "younger generation" not drinking or people cutting back on alcohol consumption for this reason or that.

To be honest, anyone can find some amount of data to support their supposition. But there is more and more information coming out that is starting to explain some of the feelings people have been having. Even over a year ago when Maggie and I attended the WiVi Show in Paso Robles...

Now that we've got your attention, no, Madroña didn't score 100 points in some influential magazine or on Tic Tok. (Although in our in-house tasting, I habitually give our wines a score of 107 points!) Instead, how about a round about discussion of what wine is really meant for in life. It's not an existential question or even a health question (although maybe 400 years ago it was safer to drink wine than the water), but it's more a question of where wine fits into life.

As you all know, we at Madroña love to travel. In fact we're meeting up with our Madroña group in Paris (that's France...

Firstly, I do understand that I work in a creative industry (the wine industry) making expressions of art or happiness or terroir or business, depending on who you are. But there are times when the overall responsibilities of the wines, vineyards and business line up with pressures in other parts of the world (that we can't control). Sometimes, honestly, this feeling of overbearing burdens can be extremely hard to shake.

Understanding that just retreating to drinking copious amounts of our own product may not be the healthiest solution, I instead search out examples of how humans are truly...

So many years ago back in the early 1990's, Hugh Chappelle was the winemaker here at Madroña (and I was just a wee whippersnapper). Some of you (and you'll be dating yourselves) still remember our 1990 Claret, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. This wine was a bit of an introduction into how well our mountain-grown Bordeaux varieties worked together. Structured and bold with layers of complexity, the wine had an immediate following of lovers.

When Hugh started here in 1993, he too noticed how well these wines married together. But he also felt the blend would benefit...

Well, a week ago, we were experiencing temperatures in the 60's and now there's a foot of snow on the ground. It's beautiful watching the snow fall gracefully to ground (and I wonder how many of the other wine regions in California experience anything like this!). Truly, though, we've been waiting for this type of weather for the entire winter. Our winter has been very warm, much warmer than we wanted or ever expected.

So, as a farmer, where does this put us right now. Well, the vines are thinking it's the beginning of spring as they have been for the last few weeks. (See the Views from the...