The Making
Every bottle by hand, start to finish.
Two pairs of hands, a Bay Ridge garden and a season of patience. Six steps, each one done the slow way.
The harvest arrives
Each autumn the grapes arrive by the crate and are stacked in the garden, then sorted cluster by cluster before anything else happens. Whatever the season gave, this is where we see it first.
By hand
There is no crusher-destemmer. The clusters are pushed by hand through a wire screen set over the vat — the berries falling through, the stems left behind. Slow, deliberate, and exactly as it has always been done.
At least five times a day
Once the yeast takes hold, the cap of skins rises, and at least five times a day it is pressed back under by hand to draw out colour and structure. For ten days, the whole house smells like a winery.
Into glass
When the sugar is nearly spent, the must goes into the basket press and the young wine runs off into glass carboys, leaving the heavy lees behind. It is the first moment it truly looks like wine.
The boiler room
Then the wine is left alone. The carboys rest under airlocks on the bottom floor, in the quiet of the boiler room, racked off their sediment, topped up and tasted from time to time. Most of winemaking is knowing when not to touch it.
Sealed by hand
When the wine is ready, and not a day before, each bottle is filled, corked by hand, dipped in wax and tagged with its vintage, varietal and lot. The labels come later; the wine never waits for them.
