It’s been a while since our last newsletter and we’ve been busy with more family time than any winter in memory, one of the great blessings of a very challenging year. Recha, a physician, and also the finance manager of the winery is so thankful to have recently received her Covid vaccination and we hope you all are able to do so soon as well. Another great blessing has been all the Zoom tastings and tours we’ve done with folks for special occasions and business events, many with our wine club members and their friends and colleagues.  It’s been a pleasure and privilege to share in these special moments and be able to meet and share our wines with so many people virtually. Our great hope is that we are able to meet many of you who tasted with us in person later this year at the winery or at special tasting events.

In the vineyards, we are seeing one of the earliest bud breaks on record in the Santa Cruz Mountains with the floral cover crops exploding with color and plants throughout the region thoroughly convinced that spring started back in February. Last week we pruned the Le Boeuf Chardonnay Vineyard that we organically farm and are so excited to see what the newly budded-over heritage clone block yields us in their first vintage. We are currently renewing our “handshake” contracts with many of our favorite growers and are hopeful for a less eventful harvest. We are sorry to report that the Bruzzone Chardonnay Vineyard in Scott’s Valley was found to have Pierce’s disease so it has to be replanted to renew it. But we look forward to our 2019 and 2020 vintage wines from that incredible site that have yet to be released.

We’ve also been busy in the cellar, keeping on top of the new 2020 wines in barrel. Despite an immensely challenging harvest that seemed to throw the book at us, we are optimistic about the wines we were able to produce under such difficult conditions. These include new wines from a few of our “bucket list” historic sites including the Mountain Winery (Formerly Paul Masson) and Peter Martin Ray Vineyard on Mt. Eden.

It’s now bottling season again and we have eight of the 2019 vintage wines going to bottle in early April. We are very excited about the five single-vineyard Chardonnays and two Pinot Noirs. Our goal is to make delicious and transparent wines that showcase the Santa Cruz Mountains and its diverse and unique sites, and all these new wines from the many “sub-regions” across the Santa Cruz Mountains will be a pleasure to share with you all as we build on our story coming off our first vintage, 2018.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has supported the winery since we formally launched last spring. Of course, it has been a very challenging time to launch but all of you have made what could have been our first and last year one full of hope, support, and optimism for the future. We look forward to many more toasts with you all.

Cheers!

Robert and Recha Bergstrom