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Our climate-controlled winery in Lompoc is outfitted with state-of-the-art winemaking equipment. At harvest, the grapes are picked early in the morning and transported quickly to the winery. The winery crew then begins the process of cluster- and berry-sorting the grapes before vinification.
White grapes are sorted and pressed, after which their juice goes straight into barrels for the fermentation; red grapes are subjected to a cryo-maceration and fermentation in either stainless steel tanks or upright French oak barrels. Cap management is conducted either by pumpovers or manual punchdowns several times each day to extract the desired color, tannin and fruit. Timing of pressing is evaluated on a tank-by-tank basis. After fermentation, the red wines are softly pressed from their skins and gently racked to a combination of new and neutral barrels. The wines then carefully age in our humidified and temperature-controlled cellars to achieve the balance of flavors and aromas we seek in our estate-grown wines.
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