Madroña Vineyards Blog

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...

Seldom do small family wineries do things just for the "hell of it". (Excuse my salty language there.) Actually, I take that back. Big business seldom does things just for the "heck of it". There are focus groups, consumer trials, test audiences, political surveys, and soft releases to dip the proverbial toe into the scary world of new products.

Yep, as a small business, we don't do any of that. Instead, we make what we like and then hope others like it too! And thus the start to the story of Madroña's Pinot Noir. (Full transparency, it should be called "Maggie's Pinot", but we'll get to...

Sometimes, being a small winery has its benefits. The experience tasters at the winery have can be more intimate, most often talking to the winemaker or the grapegrower (or both). But sometimes, when it comes to issues like new potential regulations or laws that just don't make sense for small producers, it's hard to be heard.

This is where Family Winemakers of California comes in. This organization (also know as FWC or just "The Family") is a grouping of wineries all wanting to have a voice at the state government level. FWC started back in 1990 with a set of wineries interested in making a...