Field Notes

September Winery and Vineyard Update

Happy Harvest, Everyone!

This is one of the more rewarding times of the year as we focus our attention on picking grapes and making wine. These two aspects are why many of us get into the industry - sales are typically an afterthought.

Wine grape harvest is exciting in whatever region of the world you may be, but Virginia has some unique qualities that define our terroir. The biggest factor is nature and how wildly different each vintage is. Precipitation, temperature extremes, invasive and noninvasive species have eliminated the term “normal growing season” from our repertoire. This is why growers and winemakers in VA are some of the finest in the world as there is no room for complacency. The seasonal challenges we experience force us to adapt our practices, decisions and style each year, but our focus on quality fruit and wine production never waiver.

We finished picking this past Sunday! The wines coming out of fermentor are absolutely delicious. We were blessed with another high quality and slightly higher yielding vintage than last year.

This is one of the earliest vintages in recent memory. We started picking Chardonnay clones 10 and 17 on August 7th for sparkling wine. This may be one of the reasons you don’t see more sparkling wine producers in the state because it adds a whole month onto what is already a long harvesting period. Chardonnay clone 96 was the next block to be picked 7 days later. We kept the clones separate for blending purposes and all are aging in neutral French oak for roughly 10 months. Other than stirring and topping once a month these wines are considered buttoned up until June, at which point we will blend them and put them into tirage to be made into champagne method sparkling wine.

Chenin Blanc and Roussane came in the window at the same time this year. In 2023 Roussanne was the last white to come in by a large margin, however, this year it was ripe the third week of August so we picked it the same day as the Chenin. Both wines will be still and single varietal, although my daughter has these as options for blending components for her “Lucienne” white blend she's making for you all.

The feedback from my wife on the 2023 Sauvginon Blanc was that it could use slightly less acid and a touch more fruit on the olfactory, Thus, our 2024 Sauvignon Blanc was picked a bit riper and has met the two parameters set in place by the chairman - don't worry though I put a two case limit on her!

We have 3 clones of Merlot all of which express much different cluster morphology and chemistry. We picked clone 3 for Rosé the last week of August. It tends to crop heavier, retains more acid and generates slightly lower sugars than clones 181 and 348, making it perfect for Rosé. This wine is almost done fermenting and has a beautiful nose, palate and lovely pink hue. You can look forward to “Rosie’s Rosé.” I’m still on the fence about making a portion of it into sparkling wine - we’ll see how it shakes out after primary fermentation.

Before the last respite from rain we picked the remainder of our Merlot and Cabernet Franc for red wine. Both came in riper than last year and are going to make powerful wines.

The last two hanging were Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon. We picked the PV on Saturday and the Cab on Sunday. Given the rain that was in the forecast and what we are currently experiencing, I’m happy we brought them in. Skin integrity is very important in red wine making. The tannins in the skin are responsible for the color, texture, depth and age ability of red wines. If the skins are compromised in any way then so too will be the resulting wine.

Although we are finished picking there is still a lot of cellar activity with fermentation management, pressing /barreling down reds, racking whites and making a sparkling cider! I love cider and have made many iterations of it over the years. This version will be made from Arkansas Black, Black Twig, Winesap, Gold Rush, and Hewes Crab, made in the charmat method - similar to our sparkling C2.

Two days prior to picking the Chard on August 7th we finished bottling 950 cases of our 2023 Red wines. More impressive than getting the wine into bottle in one day, was squeezing them into our very modest warehouse under the tasting room. We’ve been pouring samples of the five wines in the tasting room on weekends so please come by to taste them if you haven't already.

The first of the 2023 reds to be released (in the 4th quarter club package) will be the 2023 Vintner’s Blend. Similar to the 2016 and 2022 blends this is Cabernet Franc heavy, fruit forward and smooth on the palate. Due to the vintage it does possess a degree of weight and concentration that the previous two vintages do not. The Merlot, Cabernet Franc and two red blends will be released gradually in the new year.

As always, thank you for helping to make this dream a reality. 

Sincerely , 

Theo and the Capstone Family

May Winery and Vineyard Update

Hello Everyone, 

 

I hope this email finds you all well. This has been a very fast-paced Spring here at the vineyard. Bud break was very uniform between the varietals. Watching the shoot growth after bud break was reminiscent of a horse taking off out of the gate - the vines look like they were taking steroids in the off-season! Certainly, all this wet weather has helped with the development, which is fine this time of year, but we hope the rain starts to go away over the next couple of weeks before bloom. 

Commercial grape vines are hermaphroditic, so they don’t rely on bees or other pollinators to fertilize the fruit. Rather, each berry will push a small cap off with 5 anthers, once that cap falls the fruit is fertilized and we have fruit set. During bloom, which should take place in a couple of weeks, we hope for calm weather with no rain in order to facilitate this process. Once we have the fruit set we will go through and start counting the clusters to get a potential yield estimate for the vineyard.

 

 So far everything looks quite healthy in the vineyard, but it is still early in the season. The only cause for concern at this stage is the number of Spotted Lantern Fly (SLF) nymphs we are seeing. The nymphs are not harmful to the vine, however, the adults will feed on the vascular system of the vine and if in great enough numbers, they could literally suck the life out of the vine - new plantings are particularly susceptible. This is one reason I held off on planting this year, hoping these little buggers will continue to migrate South. 

In the Spring of 2025, we will start planting more of what we already have and add new acreage of Albariño and Gruner Veltliner. The only other change is ripping out the infernal Muscat Ottonell. So, if you like this style of wine you’re only chance to buy our first and last iteration will be from 2023. 

We finished our first round of bottling from the 2023 vintage: Sauvignon Blanc, Roussanne, Chardonnay, and Muscat. I wish we had a lot more of the wines but the 2023 vintage did not yield large quantities, however, the quality is through the roof. 

We are seeing a lot more traffic through the tasting room and increased sales this year so I had to pull several wines from the tasting menu. Our 2022 C2, 2023 Roussanne, and 2022 Vintners Blend are now club wines and only available by the bottle. Given how busy we have been on the weekends we decided to start opening from Thursday - Monday to help spread out the flow a bit.

As always, thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you soon. 

March Winery and Vineyard Update

I hope this email finds you all well. I am writing to give a brief update on the current state of affairs at Capstone. 

We are busily pruning and tying down canes in the vineyard as the season is “heating up” quickly. Dogwoods, Magnolias and Cherry blossoms are blooming early - vines will follow suit. The dormant buds are protected by a thick outer wall during winter, and as sap begins to flow, they take on a tiny cotton ball appearance and buds start to swell, this is the stage we’re at now. 

Spring is increasingly a pretty stressful time in the vineyard until Mother’s Day when we hope to be out of the frost window. We typically see bud break around the 3rd week of April, although it seems to be occurring earlier each year. Once there is green tissue exposed any temperatures below ~29F would kill that new shoot and any potential fruit. 

We have preventative measures such as wind machines, giant heaters, helicopters, large fires, beef tallow candles (little in row fires), and nutrient sprays but none of these are a sure bet - just acts of desperation by a farmer trying to save the crop.

On a lighter note, we started tasting room renovations this past week. Things are progressing nicely and we’re very excited to be able to show you all the new digs, which will be the weekend of March 22nd. We are hoping to be finished with the renovations but may still be short a couple pieces of furniture. 

I am patiently waiting on our branded corks so I can have a handful of white wines bottled by Spring. We are doing away with capsules on our wines because they are a poor use of resources and serve no real purpose other than aesthetics. However, if you make that move the cork better look damn good. Hence waiting to bottle until the nice cork is in at the end of the month. 

Looking forward to seeing you all and thank you for your patience as we begin to hit our stride. 

Cheers,
Theo

January Update

Happy New Year! 

We exceeded our expectations in 2023, thanks in part to you and mother nature. The wines are shaping up beautifully and the vineyards are dormant, waiting to be pruned. This is a fun time of year for winegrowers, as there is a lot of tasting and blending to do. Most of the science in winemaking happens during primary fermentation but the blending trials are where the art form comes into play! We pull samples of the different varietals and cooperages to analyze, very critically, for overall quality of attributes. For the reds this year, I’m going into blending sessions with the goal of making a Merlot dominant Bordeaux blend, a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant Bordeaux blend, and a varietal Cabernet Franc. This may be my goal, but ultimately the wines will dictate their percentage of involvement in the blends. We have a lot of really high quality wines to play around with, which makes it more challenging because there are so many different options and directions to go. 

This whole process will take us a couple of weeks of tasting, retasting, trial blending, back to the drawing board, then more blending. It is very important to do these trials with other palates that you respect and have a similar understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish. I usually prefer to taste with 3 to 4 other people. Once the blends have been determined, we will move the wine from barrels into a tank, run some chemistry, and test for microbes. After a few days of letting the wine settle, it will be moved back into barrel for aging until bottling in August. 

White wines are picked and fermented ahead of reds and are not such a complicated matrice as red wine. They tend to show themselves a bit earlier, allowing us to dial those blends in before the new year. I just got our Muscat Ottonel into the charmat tank and it is refermenting away, gaining pressure and bubbles. The charmat tank came in about 2 months late from Italy which has set us back a bit with your first quarter wine club release. Barring any issues the Muscat will be sparkling, in bottle, and released to you by the end of February. 

Following the Muscat, we will bottle our Sauvignon Blanc, Roussanne, and stainless steel Chardonnay. This year the C² will be made sparkling in the charmat method. Our champagne method wines will be Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay - those are years away from being ready but well worth the wait! 

My favorite, and one of the most important tasks in the vineyard, is pruning. The cuts we make now will play a large role in overall vine balance, health, and fruit yield for the coming year. The fruiting buds for 2024 developed in 2023 and given how much sunlight the buds received last year, we’re hoping for healthy yields. 

Pruning requires a high degree of viticultural knowledge, however, hauling all the clippings out of the row middle, to the row ends only requires stamina. So, if any of you have not backed off your new year's fitness resolutions, please reach out to me and I’ll help you keep them going. 

We just got the vines on order for the 2025 planting - Pinot Noir and Gruner Veltliner. These are two of my favorite grapes and no true sparkling house can function without Pinot. 

I’ll close as I always do, by saying thank you for your support. Capstone is truly a dream come true!

September Update

As far as growing seasons go, when the row crop guys look scared, the grape growers are cautiously grinning. We’re about 8.5” of rain behind this year. In fact our 100 yr old cistern at the bottom of the property that was full at the beginning of the season, now has only 2” of water in it. The vines are pretty stressed and are going into survival mode, when they shut down vegetative growth and focus on ripening the fruit. Currently we’re looking at a lighter than normal crop, owing to loose clusters with small berries. Fortunately, these tiny clusters and berries can produce concentrated wines with wonderful depth and longevity.

We could start picking Muscat, Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc for sparkling wine by the end of next week! As many of you may have noticed, we don't have our winery built yet, so this year we’re taking all our fruit up the mountain to Fox Meadow and making the wine there.  Hauling all that fruit will be quite a feat, fortunately, I like a good challenge.

-Theo