Another warm hello to you all. Everything is progressing nicely in the vineyard. We will start picking this Thursday our Muscat and one of our Chardonnay clones. We have two rows of Chardonnay clone 10 which is a Musqué clone. Up until this year all three clones of Chardonnay have been blended together, however, this year clone 10 is way ahead of the other two clones and would impart too much muscat flavor to the Chardonnay blend. So, I’m going to pick it with the Muscat and make a larger volume of a Chardonnay-Muscat blend. Many of you have tried our 2025 still Muscat Ottonel and said positive things about it, so I figured you would be fine with this decision to make a larger volume to go out in one of the 2027 allotments. If you haven’t tried the Muscat we just released then please come out and give some feedback. It is our first off-dry wine and would appreciate your feedback on the sweetness level. There were only 20 cases of it so we didn’t do a special release of it to the club, it is on a first come first served basis. We are already down to 12 cases so get it while you can. When you come for your next visit, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised by our newly repaired road. I resisted fixing it because the potholes have a way of encouraging everyone to stay under 5 mph, which conveniently prevents crop dusting! Alas, the road eventually became pretty much impassable, which makes it somewhat challenging to sell wine. So, we finally gave in and fixed it. We have a couple of events coming up. On Sunday, August 23rd , we are putting on a wine dinner at Vinícola Wine Bar in Front Royal. This is a relatively new establishment specializing in tapas and delicious wines from all around the world. Then, on Saturday, October 17th , we will host our second annual Hog and Harvest Party at Capstone. There will be live music from the folk band Shillelagh from 4-7, smoking BBQ all day (or until it runs out), and we’ll be open until 8pm. Bring a lawn chair, some friends, and kick back and relax for a few hours. Well, as we enter this most joyous - and certainly the busiest - time of year, I hope to see you around the tasting room. I’ll be in and out with plenty of grapes, fermenting juice and newly fermented wine samples to taste.
And it’s heating up again. The new “normal” for the weather seems to be increased variability and severity. We finally got caught up in the vineyard - it was looking like the Amazon out there for a couple of weeks. The extreme heat did cause some sunburning on the Merlot, but all the other varietals are fine so far. The bird netting we put up over the next few weeks will provide some shade from the sun and protection from any potential hail. Despite all the rain, the moisture was much needed. The vines are thirsty after two years of significant drought conditions. Our water tables are still several inches low but that’s better than several feet low. The fruit is about to begin “verasion”, the French term for ripening. The berries start accumulating sugar , becoming plump and soft. Red grapes turn pink, red, then deep blue. I’m red/green color blind, so the color progression is open to some interpretation. White grapes turn from rock hard, green “peas” to larger, soft, and translucent berries. The July wine club allotment will be released next weekend. We are calling it our Rosé, White, and Blue shipment. That is not fog in the background of the picture, it is actually wildfire smoke from Canada! Shouldn’t cause any smoke taint though at this growth stage. We are excited to have two new wines in the lineup. Our first ever still Chardonnay ! All the Chardonnay from 2022-2024 went to sparkling wine, but we wanted to try a still iteration as well. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on it. We also made a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant blend that we are calling Blue , for a couple reasons: we are on Blue Mountain and the Cabernet grapes themselves are very blue (my wife confirmed this). You probably won’t see either of these wines again for a while as all the Chardonnay needs to go back to the sparkling program for the next few years, and I’d like to use all the Cabernet Sauvignon this year in the St. Dominic and Francis. We hope you are having a wonderful summer, and look forward to seeing you soon. We are so grateful for all your support.
Things are moving along in the vineyard. The weather this year has not been conducive to a uniform bud break. The warm weather early on forced a lot of buds to break earlier than normal. Then it cooled right back down, delaying bud break for the remaining buds. On one vine you have shoots that are 2-3 weeks ahead of some buds that are still just swelling prior to leafing out. Hopefully this will even out as the season progresses. We are truly grateful to have survived the freeze and continue to be impressed with this elevated site. As I’m sure you’re well aware, Mother’s Day is this Sunday and there’s no place better to celebrate your bride, mother, sister, grandmother or mother-in-law than right here at Capstone Vineyards. We will be pouring mimosas on Sunday from 12-5pm and have Peter Lemmon playing live music from 1-4 pm . Come try our new VA charcuterie boards, or feel free to bring a picnic and lawn chair to kick back with and enjoy the festivities. The weather looks great. We are hosting The Hooligans with special guest Joe Furtado on Saturday, May 16th . These guys are coming up from Independence, VA and are one of the finest Old Time String bands in the State. They will be tearing it up on stage from 3-6pm or until their jars run dry, so bring your dancing shoes! This month’s wine club pick up date is the weekend of May 29th . You will be receiving the ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc , the highly anticipated ‘25 Blanc de Franc and ‘24 Cabernet Franc . We encourage you to please come out, enjoy a tasting or a glass and collect your wine. As always thank you so much for your support and we’re looking forward to seeing you soon!
Sap is flowing, pruning is almost finished, the well is fixed and I finally got the ground hog that has been taunting me. It’s shaping up to be a good year, as long as we can dodge any frost events. There are two main concerns this time of year. The first is very cold temps following sap flow that could freeze the sap, causing it to expand and split the trunk or branch. The second is an early bud break caused by these glorious 70F days, followed by a hard freeze that would kill any green tissue that is exposed. Given there isn’t a whole lot you can do to control mother nature, we focus on the gophers as we wait and pray. We have a few housekeeping items here to keep you current on Capstone happenings: March Wine Club Pick Up: This Weekend, 3/26 We’re releasing our first ever Sparkling Rosé and the 2024 Merlot in this month’s pick up! We will also begin our Spring Tasting Menu this weekend to include our 2025 Sauvignon Blanc and 2024 Cabernet Franc. A lot of new wines for you to taste so please feel free to stop in, do a tasting, and say hello. Friday, April 24th: Barrel Tasting at Reitano Vineyards Take a guided tour of the new cellar and taste through our CV 2025 red vintage and some delicious wines. Limited spots available. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner Join us for a delicious, competition style, multi-course chicken dinner between Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with CV wines.
Happy late Winter and early Spring ! I used to live in the middle of the Gaspé Peninsula, where we would receive over 20’ of snow each year, the temperature would get to -13°F and the nearest McDonalds was 2 hours away. Those were hard winters. This winter is just a pain in the bum. Busted water pipe somewhere 800’ between the tasting room and the well head, tearing the road apart with the plow blade, sliding uncontrollably halfway down the mountain on a sheet of ice and nearly decapitating myself on trellis wire, high winds rearranging deck furniture in the Merlot block and simply brutal pruning weather. The silver lining: pond hockey. The vines aren’t complaining yet. They have been enjoying a deep winter slumber under a warm blanket of snow. We start to get nervous if absolute temperatures get below 0°F. The lowest we’ve recorded so far is 4°F, however, March has proven itself to be quite a wild card in the past. We often reference how variable the growing season is in VA; the winters are quite variable as well. As the weather begins to warm the vines will start waking up. We will begin to see sap flow when making our final pruning cuts. The French refer to the sap dripping from the pruning wound as crying – bleeding would be a more accurate description. The sap hardens off and seals the cut, protecting it from infection. This is why we wait as long as possible to do the final pruning. If you’ve been to Capstone recently, you’ll notice the large piles of clippings we’ve already made from our rough pruning, when all is said and done we cut back roughly 70-80% of the vine each year. Pruning is a slow, methodical process which, in theory, we have plenty of time to complete. I love pruning. Being outside with the vines and one’s own thoughts is very serene and with all the snow we’ve had, super bright. The cuts we make now affect crop load, vine health, and vigor for the vintage so it’s important to take your time and be quite deliberate with your decisions. Sometimes it feels like rugby pre-season. Trimming the fat, motivating the team and trying to set them up for success with a game plan and training. We definitely hit the ground bottling since January – over 2000 cases so far. A typical bottling week entails two full days of filtering, one long day of bottling, then half a day of cleaning. We’ve been doing this once a week since January 12th. At my alma mater this was easy to delegate to the cellar crew, now it’s much simpler - I only have to delegate to myself and Francis. Most winemakers despise bottling as it’s a slow, tedious process during which any number of issues can arise. I very much appreciate having our own bottling line in house at Fox Meadow where we have been making all our wine over the last 3 years. This last step is arguably one of the most important parts of the process. In most cases you’ve been nurturing the grapes from planting to picking, to fermentation, aging and finally the last touch, putting it into a bottle. In 2025 I started consulting for Reitano Vineyards in Front Royal - 15 min from Capstone. One of my roles was to design and purchase all the equipment for a cellar that can do some high quality volume. I couldn’t be more grateful to Fox Meadow for allowing us to move in like a hurricane and squeeze more grapes through that 50’x50’ space than most people would be comfortable with. Now I’ve got 13K sq/ft of space in which to roll up my sleeves and get down to business. Francis walked in when it was finished, took one look and said “this is what I’m talking about”. In that vein we will be doing some barrel tastings at Reitano so you all can see the space and taste some of the ‘25 Capstone Vineyards vintage. The first one will be Friday, April 24th from 5:30-7pm for our wine club members. Reitano is open until 9pm and has a full restaurant (and cigar lounge) so I encourage you to spend time afterwards enjoying the food, wine, and ambience upstairs. Our tasting menu is going to change a bit starting this weekend, we are proud to include a Gold Medal Tasting option. This will consist of the Francis, St. Dominic and 2023 Merlot which all took Golds in the Virginia Governors Cup this year! Our next Club allotment will be released the weekend of March 26th and includes our first ever Sparkling Rosé, the Sparkling Cider and 2024 Merlot. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new wines. Mark your 2026 Calendar: Friday, April 24th: First CV Barrel Tasting 5:30-7pm, more dates to come. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner at Reitano - This is our first competition style dinner for the year and will be featuring side by side chicken courses from Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with our Capstone wines. We are so appreciative to have the extra space to accommodate you all. Saturday, July 11th: Cattle Battle Sunday, October 18th: Harvest & Hog
Happy New Year! We hope this message finds you well. It’s been a busy start to the year at Capstone—spreading 125 yards of compost, bottling early whites, blending reds, and disgorging sparkling wine. We’re excited to share that our 2023 Traditional Method Sparkling Chardonnay is officially back on the menu. We’ll be pouring complimentary tastings this weekend , after which it will be available by the glass and bottle. To be completely honest (and not so humble), there are some really beautiful wines in the pipeline. Just yesterday, a winemaker from Champagne tasted our ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay and described it as elegant and refined. The French don’t tend to blow smoke, so we’ll happily take that compliment at face value. We’ve also bottled the Sauvignon Blanc, Blanc de Franc, and Rose—each one outstanding. The 2024 reds are fully assembled and tasting great, with cider and Sparkling Rosé next up for bottling. Exciting times indeed here at Capstone. Our first Club Pickup Weekend of the year will be January 30th . This is a very special release, honoring our three children who have put in tremendous work and shown incredible patience with Capstone (and their parents) since we acquired the property. The ‘23 Francis , ‘24 Lucienne , and ‘25 Rose make up this allotment. Credit cards on file will be processed on January 28th . Please note that we will be closed Thursday, January 29th , for our staff appreciation day. Looking ahead to Valentine’s weekend, if you’re searching for something fun and delicious to do, we’d love to see you. From February 12-16 , we’ll be pairing our Sparkling Chardonnay, Rose, and Merlot with lemon curd, strawberry cake, and a chocolate mousse tart. We’re also just about finalized on dates for our three upcoming dinners and will be in touch soon with details. We look forward to seeing you and sharing all these new wines with you. We are open until 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays during the winter months. Come enjoy a glass and a sunset.
There is a lot to reflect upon as we wrap up the first three years of business. As you can imagine, it's been a pretty wild ride. I like to think we’ve been moving like a duck - calm on the surface, but paddling hard below. We opened the tasting room (which was an apartment) in January 2023, with only three red wines that we inherited with the property. The wines were good, made by Linden Vineyards from Capstone fruit - we sold through those within a year. From the beginning it’s been challenging managing the lack of inventory. However, we are finally getting our heads above water. With what we will bottle from 2024 in reds, disgorging 2023 traditional method Chardonnay, bottle from 2025 in cider, whites, rosé and sparkling, we have a pretty fine selection of wines that we would like to ensure you all get your share of. This is why we are proposing a modification to the club from four allotments to six allotments annually. Beginning in January 2026 members will receive their wines six times per year . January ‘23 Francis, ‘24 Lucienne, ‘25 Rose - named after our three children. March ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Sparkling Cider, ‘24 Merlot May ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc, ‘25 Blanc de Franc, ‘24 Cabernet Franc July ‘24 Francis, ‘25 Chardonnay (still), ‘24 Blue (Cabernet Sauvignon) September ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Lucienne, ‘23 Francis November ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay, ‘23 St. Dominic, ‘24 Petit Verdot We hope you see the value in this adaptation and look forward to hearing your thoughts. No worries if you are unable to make it each time we release a new selection, we have a new and improved tracking/storage system. So, we’ll be able to hold your wine here no problem. However, every time you do pick up the current release there will be two complimentary tastings or glasses of wine waiting for you. Keep an eye out for our 3 Dinner Dates Spring : Coq Fight Summer : Cattle Battle Fall : Swine and Wine We made a couple hundred cases of traditional method Chardonnay in 2023 entirely from Capstone grapes - the fruit for the ‘21 and ‘22 iterations came from Charlottesville. It's now been 30 months on the yeast and we should have the first 40 cases disgorged and available by Christmas! Stay tuned for updates. Have a wonderful holiday season, please feel free to stop in anytime. Bring family, bring friends. Make a reservation, or just pop in - We would love to see you all!
As some things wind down, others wind up… The vines have lost most of their leaves and are nearly tucked in for the winter. The 2025 wines are buttoned up in tank or barrel, quietly doing their thing. Meanwhile, we’ve begun assembling the 2024 red blends and are picking up cider for one last ferment of the year — this is one of my favorite times in the cellar. There's a lot to be grateful for. Certainly we had a stellar vintage, which is always rewarding. The business is doing well - thanks primarily to you all. We seem to have a bright future - thanks primarily to my family. They started on what would be considered a relatively challenging endeavor with me, and have put in so much work, time, and love into Capstone. As you know Francis and Rose have had wines made in honor of their hard work. However, there is an unsung hero whose wine has yet to be released and whose help with everything I’m very thankful for. Lucienne is a blend of 54% Chenin Blanc, 29% Sauvignon Blanc, and 17% Roussanne. My daughter, Lucy, worked on this special blend with me. In fact, we were down to two blends out of seven and Lucy picked the one she liked the most. We are releasing it this weekend - just in time for Thanksgiving! The 2024 red blending is just beginning. Right now it’s just a matter of tasting through a lot of barrels, pulling samples and sketching out some preliminary blends. Then we get a bit more formal by bringing in some trusted pallets for a couple weeks of tasting and blending sessions - certainly one of the more fun parts of the job. The reds from 24’ are really good. They have lost some of their nerve after 12 months in barrel and are showing wonderful dark, ripe fruit characters with supple tannin. You will start seeing this released in the Spring 2026. The cider is kind of like the last hurrah for the vintage. The apple guys were hard hit with a spring frost and lost most of their Hewes Crab, so the one change to this years blend is swapping Harrison for Hewes. We still have the Gold Rush, Winesap, Arkansas Black and Black Twig. In fact the last two and still hanging on the trees - that's all we’re waiting on. They say cider apples aren’t ripe until they’re on the ground. As we come into this season of gratitude and giving, I wanted to make sure to express my and my families thanks to you all. We are forever grateful for your friendship and support. Please pay a visit, and be on the look out for some special releases and an exciting wine club announcement. Cheers to a fruitful harvest and a Happy Thanksgiving!
As Fall draws to a close and the Holiday season begins, we would like to announce the Q4 wine club allotment…2 bottles of our 2024 Sparkling C² and 1 bottle of our 2023 Cabernet Franc, a perfect toast for all the celebrations to come! We will be charging cards on file this Wednesday, October 29th . Wines will be ready for pick up starting Thursday. If you need to update any of your information, please click the button below to login to your Capstone Account. Many of you have been asking about the Cider - we’re waiting on the Arkansas Black and Black Twig apples to fall, but should have this available again by Christmas! We just finished pressing off the last of the reds - Petit Verdot. Certainly, last but not least. The reds have impressed me as much as the whites. What a stunning vintage. The wines are refined and elegant - a contrast to the large, dense wines from 2023 and 2024. A more detailed update to come shortly. We hope to see you all soon. We are so grateful for your support of CV.
Mother Nature certainly has a way of keeping us on our toes. In my last update, I shared some skepticism about this vintage after a frosty early spring, heavy summer rains, and the return of the Spotted Lantern Fly. But the tide has turned — we’ve had a stellar end of summer and ripening period, and the vintage seems to have done a complete 180 (knocking on wood as I say that). Our white and rosé fruit is already in the cellar and fermenting away. One of my favorite smells in the winery is newly fermenting juice, and the wines coming out of tank right now show incredible acidity, concentration, balance, and length. Once fermentation wraps up, that’s when the tasting, talking, and decision-making begin. Much of the science of winemaking happens between harvest and the end of fermentation. But the artistry comes after: choosing whether a wine moves into another tank, a barrel (and if so, which type of oak), or even clay; deciding how much lees (the dead yeast) to incorporate during aging; weighing whether the wine stands on its own or might benefit from blending; determining how often to stir the lees to build texture. These decisions shape the style and soul of the final wine. I was slightly nervous pressing our Cabernet Franc for our first Blanc de Franc — the juice came off a bit more pink than I’d hoped. Fortunately, yeast can leach color during fermentation, and so far it looks like we may end up with the true white Cabernet Franc I envisioned. We picked the remainder of our Cabernet Franc for red wine last Friday and processed it at the new facility I designed at Reitano Vineyards, just 20 minutes from Capstone. The fruit came in clean and ripe, and the new equipment worked beautifully—some late-season wins all around. Our Cabernet Sauvignon might actually be a blockbuster this year — something that almost never happens. I honestly can’t tell you the last time I let fruit hang into October, but based on current forecasts we will ride this nice stretch out and perhaps start picking again in a week or two. Yields are down about 30%, but quality looks poised to surpass 2024. It would take divine intervention to match the 2023 vintage, but if 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that nothing’s certain until the fruit is in. Changing gears - We’re so incredibly grateful for our Wine Club members and are excited to announce an all-day Harvest Winemaker’s Party , featuring CJ’s Western BBQ and live Bluegrass music. We are staying open late. Let’s celebrate! October 18th Capstone Vineyard Harvest Party (12pm–8pm) : Open to everyone! We’ll have live bluegrass music, plenty of food, and of course, great wine. This will be a fun, relaxed day and a perfect chance to catch up, enjoy some music, and hear more about harvest and all the happenings at Capstone. We look forward to seeing you soon and sharing this exciting season with you.
Another warm hello to you all. Everything is progressing nicely in the vineyard. We will start picking this Thursday our Muscat and one of our Chardonnay clones. We have two rows of Chardonnay clone 10 which is a Musqué clone. Up until this year all three clones of Chardonnay have been blended together, however, this year clone 10 is way ahead of the other two clones and would impart too much muscat flavor to the Chardonnay blend. So, I’m going to pick it with the Muscat and make a larger volume of a Chardonnay-Muscat blend. Many of you have tried our 2025 still Muscat Ottonel and said positive things about it, so I figured you would be fine with this decision to make a larger volume to go out in one of the 2027 allotments. If you haven’t tried the Muscat we just released then please come out and give some feedback. It is our first off-dry wine and would appreciate your feedback on the sweetness level. There were only 20 cases of it so we didn’t do a special release of it to the club, it is on a first come first served basis. We are already down to 12 cases so get it while you can. When you come for your next visit, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised by our newly repaired road. I resisted fixing it because the potholes have a way of encouraging everyone to stay under 5 mph, which conveniently prevents crop dusting! Alas, the road eventually became pretty much impassable, which makes it somewhat challenging to sell wine. So, we finally gave in and fixed it. We have a couple of events coming up. On Sunday, August 23rd , we are putting on a wine dinner at Vinícola Wine Bar in Front Royal. This is a relatively new establishment specializing in tapas and delicious wines from all around the world. Then, on Saturday, October 17th , we will host our second annual Hog and Harvest Party at Capstone. There will be live music from the folk band Shillelagh from 4-7, smoking BBQ all day (or until it runs out), and we’ll be open until 8pm. Bring a lawn chair, some friends, and kick back and relax for a few hours. Well, as we enter this most joyous - and certainly the busiest - time of year, I hope to see you around the tasting room. I’ll be in and out with plenty of grapes, fermenting juice and newly fermented wine samples to taste.
And it’s heating up again. The new “normal” for the weather seems to be increased variability and severity. We finally got caught up in the vineyard - it was looking like the Amazon out there for a couple of weeks. The extreme heat did cause some sunburning on the Merlot, but all the other varietals are fine so far. The bird netting we put up over the next few weeks will provide some shade from the sun and protection from any potential hail. Despite all the rain, the moisture was much needed. The vines are thirsty after two years of significant drought conditions. Our water tables are still several inches low but that’s better than several feet low. The fruit is about to begin “verasion”, the French term for ripening. The berries start accumulating sugar , becoming plump and soft. Red grapes turn pink, red, then deep blue. I’m red/green color blind, so the color progression is open to some interpretation. White grapes turn from rock hard, green “peas” to larger, soft, and translucent berries. The July wine club allotment will be released next weekend. We are calling it our Rosé, White, and Blue shipment. That is not fog in the background of the picture, it is actually wildfire smoke from Canada! Shouldn’t cause any smoke taint though at this growth stage. We are excited to have two new wines in the lineup. Our first ever still Chardonnay ! All the Chardonnay from 2022-2024 went to sparkling wine, but we wanted to try a still iteration as well. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on it. We also made a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant blend that we are calling Blue , for a couple reasons: we are on Blue Mountain and the Cabernet grapes themselves are very blue (my wife confirmed this). You probably won’t see either of these wines again for a while as all the Chardonnay needs to go back to the sparkling program for the next few years, and I’d like to use all the Cabernet Sauvignon this year in the St. Dominic and Francis. We hope you are having a wonderful summer, and look forward to seeing you soon. We are so grateful for all your support.
Things are moving along in the vineyard. The weather this year has not been conducive to a uniform bud break. The warm weather early on forced a lot of buds to break earlier than normal. Then it cooled right back down, delaying bud break for the remaining buds. On one vine you have shoots that are 2-3 weeks ahead of some buds that are still just swelling prior to leafing out. Hopefully this will even out as the season progresses. We are truly grateful to have survived the freeze and continue to be impressed with this elevated site. As I’m sure you’re well aware, Mother’s Day is this Sunday and there’s no place better to celebrate your bride, mother, sister, grandmother or mother-in-law than right here at Capstone Vineyards. We will be pouring mimosas on Sunday from 12-5pm and have Peter Lemmon playing live music from 1-4 pm . Come try our new VA charcuterie boards, or feel free to bring a picnic and lawn chair to kick back with and enjoy the festivities. The weather looks great. We are hosting The Hooligans with special guest Joe Furtado on Saturday, May 16th . These guys are coming up from Independence, VA and are one of the finest Old Time String bands in the State. They will be tearing it up on stage from 3-6pm or until their jars run dry, so bring your dancing shoes! This month’s wine club pick up date is the weekend of May 29th . You will be receiving the ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc , the highly anticipated ‘25 Blanc de Franc and ‘24 Cabernet Franc . We encourage you to please come out, enjoy a tasting or a glass and collect your wine. As always thank you so much for your support and we’re looking forward to seeing you soon!
Sap is flowing, pruning is almost finished, the well is fixed and I finally got the ground hog that has been taunting me. It’s shaping up to be a good year, as long as we can dodge any frost events. There are two main concerns this time of year. The first is very cold temps following sap flow that could freeze the sap, causing it to expand and split the trunk or branch. The second is an early bud break caused by these glorious 70F days, followed by a hard freeze that would kill any green tissue that is exposed. Given there isn’t a whole lot you can do to control mother nature, we focus on the gophers as we wait and pray. We have a few housekeeping items here to keep you current on Capstone happenings: March Wine Club Pick Up: This Weekend, 3/26 We’re releasing our first ever Sparkling Rosé and the 2024 Merlot in this month’s pick up! We will also begin our Spring Tasting Menu this weekend to include our 2025 Sauvignon Blanc and 2024 Cabernet Franc. A lot of new wines for you to taste so please feel free to stop in, do a tasting, and say hello. Friday, April 24th: Barrel Tasting at Reitano Vineyards Take a guided tour of the new cellar and taste through our CV 2025 red vintage and some delicious wines. Limited spots available. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner Join us for a delicious, competition style, multi-course chicken dinner between Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with CV wines.
Happy late Winter and early Spring ! I used to live in the middle of the Gaspé Peninsula, where we would receive over 20’ of snow each year, the temperature would get to -13°F and the nearest McDonalds was 2 hours away. Those were hard winters. This winter is just a pain in the bum. Busted water pipe somewhere 800’ between the tasting room and the well head, tearing the road apart with the plow blade, sliding uncontrollably halfway down the mountain on a sheet of ice and nearly decapitating myself on trellis wire, high winds rearranging deck furniture in the Merlot block and simply brutal pruning weather. The silver lining: pond hockey. The vines aren’t complaining yet. They have been enjoying a deep winter slumber under a warm blanket of snow. We start to get nervous if absolute temperatures get below 0°F. The lowest we’ve recorded so far is 4°F, however, March has proven itself to be quite a wild card in the past. We often reference how variable the growing season is in VA; the winters are quite variable as well. As the weather begins to warm the vines will start waking up. We will begin to see sap flow when making our final pruning cuts. The French refer to the sap dripping from the pruning wound as crying – bleeding would be a more accurate description. The sap hardens off and seals the cut, protecting it from infection. This is why we wait as long as possible to do the final pruning. If you’ve been to Capstone recently, you’ll notice the large piles of clippings we’ve already made from our rough pruning, when all is said and done we cut back roughly 70-80% of the vine each year. Pruning is a slow, methodical process which, in theory, we have plenty of time to complete. I love pruning. Being outside with the vines and one’s own thoughts is very serene and with all the snow we’ve had, super bright. The cuts we make now affect crop load, vine health, and vigor for the vintage so it’s important to take your time and be quite deliberate with your decisions. Sometimes it feels like rugby pre-season. Trimming the fat, motivating the team and trying to set them up for success with a game plan and training. We definitely hit the ground bottling since January – over 2000 cases so far. A typical bottling week entails two full days of filtering, one long day of bottling, then half a day of cleaning. We’ve been doing this once a week since January 12th. At my alma mater this was easy to delegate to the cellar crew, now it’s much simpler - I only have to delegate to myself and Francis. Most winemakers despise bottling as it’s a slow, tedious process during which any number of issues can arise. I very much appreciate having our own bottling line in house at Fox Meadow where we have been making all our wine over the last 3 years. This last step is arguably one of the most important parts of the process. In most cases you’ve been nurturing the grapes from planting to picking, to fermentation, aging and finally the last touch, putting it into a bottle. In 2025 I started consulting for Reitano Vineyards in Front Royal - 15 min from Capstone. One of my roles was to design and purchase all the equipment for a cellar that can do some high quality volume. I couldn’t be more grateful to Fox Meadow for allowing us to move in like a hurricane and squeeze more grapes through that 50’x50’ space than most people would be comfortable with. Now I’ve got 13K sq/ft of space in which to roll up my sleeves and get down to business. Francis walked in when it was finished, took one look and said “this is what I’m talking about”. In that vein we will be doing some barrel tastings at Reitano so you all can see the space and taste some of the ‘25 Capstone Vineyards vintage. The first one will be Friday, April 24th from 5:30-7pm for our wine club members. Reitano is open until 9pm and has a full restaurant (and cigar lounge) so I encourage you to spend time afterwards enjoying the food, wine, and ambience upstairs. Our tasting menu is going to change a bit starting this weekend, we are proud to include a Gold Medal Tasting option. This will consist of the Francis, St. Dominic and 2023 Merlot which all took Golds in the Virginia Governors Cup this year! Our next Club allotment will be released the weekend of March 26th and includes our first ever Sparkling Rosé, the Sparkling Cider and 2024 Merlot. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new wines. Mark your 2026 Calendar: Friday, April 24th: First CV Barrel Tasting 5:30-7pm, more dates to come. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner at Reitano - This is our first competition style dinner for the year and will be featuring side by side chicken courses from Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with our Capstone wines. We are so appreciative to have the extra space to accommodate you all. Saturday, July 11th: Cattle Battle Sunday, October 18th: Harvest & Hog
Happy New Year! We hope this message finds you well. It’s been a busy start to the year at Capstone—spreading 125 yards of compost, bottling early whites, blending reds, and disgorging sparkling wine. We’re excited to share that our 2023 Traditional Method Sparkling Chardonnay is officially back on the menu. We’ll be pouring complimentary tastings this weekend , after which it will be available by the glass and bottle. To be completely honest (and not so humble), there are some really beautiful wines in the pipeline. Just yesterday, a winemaker from Champagne tasted our ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay and described it as elegant and refined. The French don’t tend to blow smoke, so we’ll happily take that compliment at face value. We’ve also bottled the Sauvignon Blanc, Blanc de Franc, and Rose—each one outstanding. The 2024 reds are fully assembled and tasting great, with cider and Sparkling Rosé next up for bottling. Exciting times indeed here at Capstone. Our first Club Pickup Weekend of the year will be January 30th . This is a very special release, honoring our three children who have put in tremendous work and shown incredible patience with Capstone (and their parents) since we acquired the property. The ‘23 Francis , ‘24 Lucienne , and ‘25 Rose make up this allotment. Credit cards on file will be processed on January 28th . Please note that we will be closed Thursday, January 29th , for our staff appreciation day. Looking ahead to Valentine’s weekend, if you’re searching for something fun and delicious to do, we’d love to see you. From February 12-16 , we’ll be pairing our Sparkling Chardonnay, Rose, and Merlot with lemon curd, strawberry cake, and a chocolate mousse tart. We’re also just about finalized on dates for our three upcoming dinners and will be in touch soon with details. We look forward to seeing you and sharing all these new wines with you. We are open until 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays during the winter months. Come enjoy a glass and a sunset.
There is a lot to reflect upon as we wrap up the first three years of business. As you can imagine, it's been a pretty wild ride. I like to think we’ve been moving like a duck - calm on the surface, but paddling hard below. We opened the tasting room (which was an apartment) in January 2023, with only three red wines that we inherited with the property. The wines were good, made by Linden Vineyards from Capstone fruit - we sold through those within a year. From the beginning it’s been challenging managing the lack of inventory. However, we are finally getting our heads above water. With what we will bottle from 2024 in reds, disgorging 2023 traditional method Chardonnay, bottle from 2025 in cider, whites, rosé and sparkling, we have a pretty fine selection of wines that we would like to ensure you all get your share of. This is why we are proposing a modification to the club from four allotments to six allotments annually. Beginning in January 2026 members will receive their wines six times per year . January ‘23 Francis, ‘24 Lucienne, ‘25 Rose - named after our three children. March ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Sparkling Cider, ‘24 Merlot May ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc, ‘25 Blanc de Franc, ‘24 Cabernet Franc July ‘24 Francis, ‘25 Chardonnay (still), ‘24 Blue (Cabernet Sauvignon) September ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Lucienne, ‘23 Francis November ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay, ‘23 St. Dominic, ‘24 Petit Verdot We hope you see the value in this adaptation and look forward to hearing your thoughts. No worries if you are unable to make it each time we release a new selection, we have a new and improved tracking/storage system. So, we’ll be able to hold your wine here no problem. However, every time you do pick up the current release there will be two complimentary tastings or glasses of wine waiting for you. Keep an eye out for our 3 Dinner Dates Spring : Coq Fight Summer : Cattle Battle Fall : Swine and Wine We made a couple hundred cases of traditional method Chardonnay in 2023 entirely from Capstone grapes - the fruit for the ‘21 and ‘22 iterations came from Charlottesville. It's now been 30 months on the yeast and we should have the first 40 cases disgorged and available by Christmas! Stay tuned for updates. Have a wonderful holiday season, please feel free to stop in anytime. Bring family, bring friends. Make a reservation, or just pop in - We would love to see you all!
As some things wind down, others wind up… The vines have lost most of their leaves and are nearly tucked in for the winter. The 2025 wines are buttoned up in tank or barrel, quietly doing their thing. Meanwhile, we’ve begun assembling the 2024 red blends and are picking up cider for one last ferment of the year — this is one of my favorite times in the cellar. There's a lot to be grateful for. Certainly we had a stellar vintage, which is always rewarding. The business is doing well - thanks primarily to you all. We seem to have a bright future - thanks primarily to my family. They started on what would be considered a relatively challenging endeavor with me, and have put in so much work, time, and love into Capstone. As you know Francis and Rose have had wines made in honor of their hard work. However, there is an unsung hero whose wine has yet to be released and whose help with everything I’m very thankful for. Lucienne is a blend of 54% Chenin Blanc, 29% Sauvignon Blanc, and 17% Roussanne. My daughter, Lucy, worked on this special blend with me. In fact, we were down to two blends out of seven and Lucy picked the one she liked the most. We are releasing it this weekend - just in time for Thanksgiving! The 2024 red blending is just beginning. Right now it’s just a matter of tasting through a lot of barrels, pulling samples and sketching out some preliminary blends. Then we get a bit more formal by bringing in some trusted pallets for a couple weeks of tasting and blending sessions - certainly one of the more fun parts of the job. The reds from 24’ are really good. They have lost some of their nerve after 12 months in barrel and are showing wonderful dark, ripe fruit characters with supple tannin. You will start seeing this released in the Spring 2026. The cider is kind of like the last hurrah for the vintage. The apple guys were hard hit with a spring frost and lost most of their Hewes Crab, so the one change to this years blend is swapping Harrison for Hewes. We still have the Gold Rush, Winesap, Arkansas Black and Black Twig. In fact the last two and still hanging on the trees - that's all we’re waiting on. They say cider apples aren’t ripe until they’re on the ground. As we come into this season of gratitude and giving, I wanted to make sure to express my and my families thanks to you all. We are forever grateful for your friendship and support. Please pay a visit, and be on the look out for some special releases and an exciting wine club announcement. Cheers to a fruitful harvest and a Happy Thanksgiving!
As Fall draws to a close and the Holiday season begins, we would like to announce the Q4 wine club allotment…2 bottles of our 2024 Sparkling C² and 1 bottle of our 2023 Cabernet Franc, a perfect toast for all the celebrations to come! We will be charging cards on file this Wednesday, October 29th . Wines will be ready for pick up starting Thursday. If you need to update any of your information, please click the button below to login to your Capstone Account. Many of you have been asking about the Cider - we’re waiting on the Arkansas Black and Black Twig apples to fall, but should have this available again by Christmas! We just finished pressing off the last of the reds - Petit Verdot. Certainly, last but not least. The reds have impressed me as much as the whites. What a stunning vintage. The wines are refined and elegant - a contrast to the large, dense wines from 2023 and 2024. A more detailed update to come shortly. We hope to see you all soon. We are so grateful for your support of CV.
Mother Nature certainly has a way of keeping us on our toes. In my last update, I shared some skepticism about this vintage after a frosty early spring, heavy summer rains, and the return of the Spotted Lantern Fly. But the tide has turned — we’ve had a stellar end of summer and ripening period, and the vintage seems to have done a complete 180 (knocking on wood as I say that). Our white and rosé fruit is already in the cellar and fermenting away. One of my favorite smells in the winery is newly fermenting juice, and the wines coming out of tank right now show incredible acidity, concentration, balance, and length. Once fermentation wraps up, that’s when the tasting, talking, and decision-making begin. Much of the science of winemaking happens between harvest and the end of fermentation. But the artistry comes after: choosing whether a wine moves into another tank, a barrel (and if so, which type of oak), or even clay; deciding how much lees (the dead yeast) to incorporate during aging; weighing whether the wine stands on its own or might benefit from blending; determining how often to stir the lees to build texture. These decisions shape the style and soul of the final wine. I was slightly nervous pressing our Cabernet Franc for our first Blanc de Franc — the juice came off a bit more pink than I’d hoped. Fortunately, yeast can leach color during fermentation, and so far it looks like we may end up with the true white Cabernet Franc I envisioned. We picked the remainder of our Cabernet Franc for red wine last Friday and processed it at the new facility I designed at Reitano Vineyards, just 20 minutes from Capstone. The fruit came in clean and ripe, and the new equipment worked beautifully—some late-season wins all around. Our Cabernet Sauvignon might actually be a blockbuster this year — something that almost never happens. I honestly can’t tell you the last time I let fruit hang into October, but based on current forecasts we will ride this nice stretch out and perhaps start picking again in a week or two. Yields are down about 30%, but quality looks poised to surpass 2024. It would take divine intervention to match the 2023 vintage, but if 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that nothing’s certain until the fruit is in. Changing gears - We’re so incredibly grateful for our Wine Club members and are excited to announce an all-day Harvest Winemaker’s Party , featuring CJ’s Western BBQ and live Bluegrass music. We are staying open late. Let’s celebrate! October 18th Capstone Vineyard Harvest Party (12pm–8pm) : Open to everyone! We’ll have live bluegrass music, plenty of food, and of course, great wine. This will be a fun, relaxed day and a perfect chance to catch up, enjoy some music, and hear more about harvest and all the happenings at Capstone. We look forward to seeing you soon and sharing this exciting season with you.
Another warm hello to you all. Everything is progressing nicely in the vineyard. We will start picking this Thursday our Muscat and one of our Chardonnay clones. We have two rows of Chardonnay clone 10 which is a Musqué clone. Up until this year all three clones of Chardonnay have been blended together, however, this year clone 10 is way ahead of the other two clones and would impart too much muscat flavor to the Chardonnay blend. So, I’m going to pick it with the Muscat and make a larger volume of a Chardonnay-Muscat blend. Many of you have tried our 2025 still Muscat Ottonel and said positive things about it, so I figured you would be fine with this decision to make a larger volume to go out in one of the 2027 allotments. If you haven’t tried the Muscat we just released then please come out and give some feedback. It is our first off-dry wine and would appreciate your feedback on the sweetness level. There were only 20 cases of it so we didn’t do a special release of it to the club, it is on a first come first served basis. We are already down to 12 cases so get it while you can. When you come for your next visit, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised by our newly repaired road. I resisted fixing it because the potholes have a way of encouraging everyone to stay under 5 mph, which conveniently prevents crop dusting! Alas, the road eventually became pretty much impassable, which makes it somewhat challenging to sell wine. So, we finally gave in and fixed it. We have a couple of events coming up. On Sunday, August 23rd , we are putting on a wine dinner at Vinícola Wine Bar in Front Royal. This is a relatively new establishment specializing in tapas and delicious wines from all around the world. Then, on Saturday, October 17th , we will host our second annual Hog and Harvest Party at Capstone. There will be live music from the folk band Shillelagh from 4-7, smoking BBQ all day (or until it runs out), and we’ll be open until 8pm. Bring a lawn chair, some friends, and kick back and relax for a few hours. Well, as we enter this most joyous - and certainly the busiest - time of year, I hope to see you around the tasting room. I’ll be in and out with plenty of grapes, fermenting juice and newly fermented wine samples to taste.
And it’s heating up again. The new “normal” for the weather seems to be increased variability and severity. We finally got caught up in the vineyard - it was looking like the Amazon out there for a couple of weeks. The extreme heat did cause some sunburning on the Merlot, but all the other varietals are fine so far. The bird netting we put up over the next few weeks will provide some shade from the sun and protection from any potential hail. Despite all the rain, the moisture was much needed. The vines are thirsty after two years of significant drought conditions. Our water tables are still several inches low but that’s better than several feet low. The fruit is about to begin “verasion”, the French term for ripening. The berries start accumulating sugar , becoming plump and soft. Red grapes turn pink, red, then deep blue. I’m red/green color blind, so the color progression is open to some interpretation. White grapes turn from rock hard, green “peas” to larger, soft, and translucent berries. The July wine club allotment will be released next weekend. We are calling it our Rosé, White, and Blue shipment. That is not fog in the background of the picture, it is actually wildfire smoke from Canada! Shouldn’t cause any smoke taint though at this growth stage. We are excited to have two new wines in the lineup. Our first ever still Chardonnay ! All the Chardonnay from 2022-2024 went to sparkling wine, but we wanted to try a still iteration as well. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on it. We also made a Cabernet Sauvignon dominant blend that we are calling Blue , for a couple reasons: we are on Blue Mountain and the Cabernet grapes themselves are very blue (my wife confirmed this). You probably won’t see either of these wines again for a while as all the Chardonnay needs to go back to the sparkling program for the next few years, and I’d like to use all the Cabernet Sauvignon this year in the St. Dominic and Francis. We hope you are having a wonderful summer, and look forward to seeing you soon. We are so grateful for all your support.
Things are moving along in the vineyard. The weather this year has not been conducive to a uniform bud break. The warm weather early on forced a lot of buds to break earlier than normal. Then it cooled right back down, delaying bud break for the remaining buds. On one vine you have shoots that are 2-3 weeks ahead of some buds that are still just swelling prior to leafing out. Hopefully this will even out as the season progresses. We are truly grateful to have survived the freeze and continue to be impressed with this elevated site. As I’m sure you’re well aware, Mother’s Day is this Sunday and there’s no place better to celebrate your bride, mother, sister, grandmother or mother-in-law than right here at Capstone Vineyards. We will be pouring mimosas on Sunday from 12-5pm and have Peter Lemmon playing live music from 1-4 pm . Come try our new VA charcuterie boards, or feel free to bring a picnic and lawn chair to kick back with and enjoy the festivities. The weather looks great. We are hosting The Hooligans with special guest Joe Furtado on Saturday, May 16th . These guys are coming up from Independence, VA and are one of the finest Old Time String bands in the State. They will be tearing it up on stage from 3-6pm or until their jars run dry, so bring your dancing shoes! This month’s wine club pick up date is the weekend of May 29th . You will be receiving the ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc , the highly anticipated ‘25 Blanc de Franc and ‘24 Cabernet Franc . We encourage you to please come out, enjoy a tasting or a glass and collect your wine. As always thank you so much for your support and we’re looking forward to seeing you soon!
Sap is flowing, pruning is almost finished, the well is fixed and I finally got the ground hog that has been taunting me. It’s shaping up to be a good year, as long as we can dodge any frost events. There are two main concerns this time of year. The first is very cold temps following sap flow that could freeze the sap, causing it to expand and split the trunk or branch. The second is an early bud break caused by these glorious 70F days, followed by a hard freeze that would kill any green tissue that is exposed. Given there isn’t a whole lot you can do to control mother nature, we focus on the gophers as we wait and pray. We have a few housekeeping items here to keep you current on Capstone happenings: March Wine Club Pick Up: This Weekend, 3/26 We’re releasing our first ever Sparkling Rosé and the 2024 Merlot in this month’s pick up! We will also begin our Spring Tasting Menu this weekend to include our 2025 Sauvignon Blanc and 2024 Cabernet Franc. A lot of new wines for you to taste so please feel free to stop in, do a tasting, and say hello. Friday, April 24th: Barrel Tasting at Reitano Vineyards Take a guided tour of the new cellar and taste through our CV 2025 red vintage and some delicious wines. Limited spots available. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner Join us for a delicious, competition style, multi-course chicken dinner between Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with CV wines.
Happy late Winter and early Spring ! I used to live in the middle of the Gaspé Peninsula, where we would receive over 20’ of snow each year, the temperature would get to -13°F and the nearest McDonalds was 2 hours away. Those were hard winters. This winter is just a pain in the bum. Busted water pipe somewhere 800’ between the tasting room and the well head, tearing the road apart with the plow blade, sliding uncontrollably halfway down the mountain on a sheet of ice and nearly decapitating myself on trellis wire, high winds rearranging deck furniture in the Merlot block and simply brutal pruning weather. The silver lining: pond hockey. The vines aren’t complaining yet. They have been enjoying a deep winter slumber under a warm blanket of snow. We start to get nervous if absolute temperatures get below 0°F. The lowest we’ve recorded so far is 4°F, however, March has proven itself to be quite a wild card in the past. We often reference how variable the growing season is in VA; the winters are quite variable as well. As the weather begins to warm the vines will start waking up. We will begin to see sap flow when making our final pruning cuts. The French refer to the sap dripping from the pruning wound as crying – bleeding would be a more accurate description. The sap hardens off and seals the cut, protecting it from infection. This is why we wait as long as possible to do the final pruning. If you’ve been to Capstone recently, you’ll notice the large piles of clippings we’ve already made from our rough pruning, when all is said and done we cut back roughly 70-80% of the vine each year. Pruning is a slow, methodical process which, in theory, we have plenty of time to complete. I love pruning. Being outside with the vines and one’s own thoughts is very serene and with all the snow we’ve had, super bright. The cuts we make now affect crop load, vine health, and vigor for the vintage so it’s important to take your time and be quite deliberate with your decisions. Sometimes it feels like rugby pre-season. Trimming the fat, motivating the team and trying to set them up for success with a game plan and training. We definitely hit the ground bottling since January – over 2000 cases so far. A typical bottling week entails two full days of filtering, one long day of bottling, then half a day of cleaning. We’ve been doing this once a week since January 12th. At my alma mater this was easy to delegate to the cellar crew, now it’s much simpler - I only have to delegate to myself and Francis. Most winemakers despise bottling as it’s a slow, tedious process during which any number of issues can arise. I very much appreciate having our own bottling line in house at Fox Meadow where we have been making all our wine over the last 3 years. This last step is arguably one of the most important parts of the process. In most cases you’ve been nurturing the grapes from planting to picking, to fermentation, aging and finally the last touch, putting it into a bottle. In 2025 I started consulting for Reitano Vineyards in Front Royal - 15 min from Capstone. One of my roles was to design and purchase all the equipment for a cellar that can do some high quality volume. I couldn’t be more grateful to Fox Meadow for allowing us to move in like a hurricane and squeeze more grapes through that 50’x50’ space than most people would be comfortable with. Now I’ve got 13K sq/ft of space in which to roll up my sleeves and get down to business. Francis walked in when it was finished, took one look and said “this is what I’m talking about”. In that vein we will be doing some barrel tastings at Reitano so you all can see the space and taste some of the ‘25 Capstone Vineyards vintage. The first one will be Friday, April 24th from 5:30-7pm for our wine club members. Reitano is open until 9pm and has a full restaurant (and cigar lounge) so I encourage you to spend time afterwards enjoying the food, wine, and ambience upstairs. Our tasting menu is going to change a bit starting this weekend, we are proud to include a Gold Medal Tasting option. This will consist of the Francis, St. Dominic and 2023 Merlot which all took Golds in the Virginia Governors Cup this year! Our next Club allotment will be released the weekend of March 26th and includes our first ever Sparkling Rosé, the Sparkling Cider and 2024 Merlot. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the new wines. Mark your 2026 Calendar: Friday, April 24th: First CV Barrel Tasting 5:30-7pm, more dates to come. Saturday, May 16th: Coq Fight Winemaker’s Dinner at Reitano - This is our first competition style dinner for the year and will be featuring side by side chicken courses from Whiffletree and Keystone Farms paired with our Capstone wines. We are so appreciative to have the extra space to accommodate you all. Saturday, July 11th: Cattle Battle Sunday, October 18th: Harvest & Hog
Happy New Year! We hope this message finds you well. It’s been a busy start to the year at Capstone—spreading 125 yards of compost, bottling early whites, blending reds, and disgorging sparkling wine. We’re excited to share that our 2023 Traditional Method Sparkling Chardonnay is officially back on the menu. We’ll be pouring complimentary tastings this weekend , after which it will be available by the glass and bottle. To be completely honest (and not so humble), there are some really beautiful wines in the pipeline. Just yesterday, a winemaker from Champagne tasted our ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay and described it as elegant and refined. The French don’t tend to blow smoke, so we’ll happily take that compliment at face value. We’ve also bottled the Sauvignon Blanc, Blanc de Franc, and Rose—each one outstanding. The 2024 reds are fully assembled and tasting great, with cider and Sparkling Rosé next up for bottling. Exciting times indeed here at Capstone. Our first Club Pickup Weekend of the year will be January 30th . This is a very special release, honoring our three children who have put in tremendous work and shown incredible patience with Capstone (and their parents) since we acquired the property. The ‘23 Francis , ‘24 Lucienne , and ‘25 Rose make up this allotment. Credit cards on file will be processed on January 28th . Please note that we will be closed Thursday, January 29th , for our staff appreciation day. Looking ahead to Valentine’s weekend, if you’re searching for something fun and delicious to do, we’d love to see you. From February 12-16 , we’ll be pairing our Sparkling Chardonnay, Rose, and Merlot with lemon curd, strawberry cake, and a chocolate mousse tart. We’re also just about finalized on dates for our three upcoming dinners and will be in touch soon with details. We look forward to seeing you and sharing all these new wines with you. We are open until 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays during the winter months. Come enjoy a glass and a sunset.
There is a lot to reflect upon as we wrap up the first three years of business. As you can imagine, it's been a pretty wild ride. I like to think we’ve been moving like a duck - calm on the surface, but paddling hard below. We opened the tasting room (which was an apartment) in January 2023, with only three red wines that we inherited with the property. The wines were good, made by Linden Vineyards from Capstone fruit - we sold through those within a year. From the beginning it’s been challenging managing the lack of inventory. However, we are finally getting our heads above water. With what we will bottle from 2024 in reds, disgorging 2023 traditional method Chardonnay, bottle from 2025 in cider, whites, rosé and sparkling, we have a pretty fine selection of wines that we would like to ensure you all get your share of. This is why we are proposing a modification to the club from four allotments to six allotments annually. Beginning in January 2026 members will receive their wines six times per year . January ‘23 Francis, ‘24 Lucienne, ‘25 Rose - named after our three children. March ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Sparkling Cider, ‘24 Merlot May ‘25 Sauvignon Blanc, ‘25 Blanc de Franc, ‘24 Cabernet Franc July ‘24 Francis, ‘25 Chardonnay (still), ‘24 Blue (Cabernet Sauvignon) September ‘25 Sparkling Rosé, ‘25 Lucienne, ‘23 Francis November ‘23 Sparkling Chardonnay, ‘23 St. Dominic, ‘24 Petit Verdot We hope you see the value in this adaptation and look forward to hearing your thoughts. No worries if you are unable to make it each time we release a new selection, we have a new and improved tracking/storage system. So, we’ll be able to hold your wine here no problem. However, every time you do pick up the current release there will be two complimentary tastings or glasses of wine waiting for you. Keep an eye out for our 3 Dinner Dates Spring : Coq Fight Summer : Cattle Battle Fall : Swine and Wine We made a couple hundred cases of traditional method Chardonnay in 2023 entirely from Capstone grapes - the fruit for the ‘21 and ‘22 iterations came from Charlottesville. It's now been 30 months on the yeast and we should have the first 40 cases disgorged and available by Christmas! Stay tuned for updates. Have a wonderful holiday season, please feel free to stop in anytime. Bring family, bring friends. Make a reservation, or just pop in - We would love to see you all!
As some things wind down, others wind up… The vines have lost most of their leaves and are nearly tucked in for the winter. The 2025 wines are buttoned up in tank or barrel, quietly doing their thing. Meanwhile, we’ve begun assembling the 2024 red blends and are picking up cider for one last ferment of the year — this is one of my favorite times in the cellar. There's a lot to be grateful for. Certainly we had a stellar vintage, which is always rewarding. The business is doing well - thanks primarily to you all. We seem to have a bright future - thanks primarily to my family. They started on what would be considered a relatively challenging endeavor with me, and have put in so much work, time, and love into Capstone. As you know Francis and Rose have had wines made in honor of their hard work. However, there is an unsung hero whose wine has yet to be released and whose help with everything I’m very thankful for. Lucienne is a blend of 54% Chenin Blanc, 29% Sauvignon Blanc, and 17% Roussanne. My daughter, Lucy, worked on this special blend with me. In fact, we were down to two blends out of seven and Lucy picked the one she liked the most. We are releasing it this weekend - just in time for Thanksgiving! The 2024 red blending is just beginning. Right now it’s just a matter of tasting through a lot of barrels, pulling samples and sketching out some preliminary blends. Then we get a bit more formal by bringing in some trusted pallets for a couple weeks of tasting and blending sessions - certainly one of the more fun parts of the job. The reds from 24’ are really good. They have lost some of their nerve after 12 months in barrel and are showing wonderful dark, ripe fruit characters with supple tannin. You will start seeing this released in the Spring 2026. The cider is kind of like the last hurrah for the vintage. The apple guys were hard hit with a spring frost and lost most of their Hewes Crab, so the one change to this years blend is swapping Harrison for Hewes. We still have the Gold Rush, Winesap, Arkansas Black and Black Twig. In fact the last two and still hanging on the trees - that's all we’re waiting on. They say cider apples aren’t ripe until they’re on the ground. As we come into this season of gratitude and giving, I wanted to make sure to express my and my families thanks to you all. We are forever grateful for your friendship and support. Please pay a visit, and be on the look out for some special releases and an exciting wine club announcement. Cheers to a fruitful harvest and a Happy Thanksgiving!
As Fall draws to a close and the Holiday season begins, we would like to announce the Q4 wine club allotment…2 bottles of our 2024 Sparkling C² and 1 bottle of our 2023 Cabernet Franc, a perfect toast for all the celebrations to come! We will be charging cards on file this Wednesday, October 29th . Wines will be ready for pick up starting Thursday. If you need to update any of your information, please click the button below to login to your Capstone Account. Many of you have been asking about the Cider - we’re waiting on the Arkansas Black and Black Twig apples to fall, but should have this available again by Christmas! We just finished pressing off the last of the reds - Petit Verdot. Certainly, last but not least. The reds have impressed me as much as the whites. What a stunning vintage. The wines are refined and elegant - a contrast to the large, dense wines from 2023 and 2024. A more detailed update to come shortly. We hope to see you all soon. We are so grateful for your support of CV.
Mother Nature certainly has a way of keeping us on our toes. In my last update, I shared some skepticism about this vintage after a frosty early spring, heavy summer rains, and the return of the Spotted Lantern Fly. But the tide has turned — we’ve had a stellar end of summer and ripening period, and the vintage seems to have done a complete 180 (knocking on wood as I say that). Our white and rosé fruit is already in the cellar and fermenting away. One of my favorite smells in the winery is newly fermenting juice, and the wines coming out of tank right now show incredible acidity, concentration, balance, and length. Once fermentation wraps up, that’s when the tasting, talking, and decision-making begin. Much of the science of winemaking happens between harvest and the end of fermentation. But the artistry comes after: choosing whether a wine moves into another tank, a barrel (and if so, which type of oak), or even clay; deciding how much lees (the dead yeast) to incorporate during aging; weighing whether the wine stands on its own or might benefit from blending; determining how often to stir the lees to build texture. These decisions shape the style and soul of the final wine. I was slightly nervous pressing our Cabernet Franc for our first Blanc de Franc — the juice came off a bit more pink than I’d hoped. Fortunately, yeast can leach color during fermentation, and so far it looks like we may end up with the true white Cabernet Franc I envisioned. We picked the remainder of our Cabernet Franc for red wine last Friday and processed it at the new facility I designed at Reitano Vineyards, just 20 minutes from Capstone. The fruit came in clean and ripe, and the new equipment worked beautifully—some late-season wins all around. Our Cabernet Sauvignon might actually be a blockbuster this year — something that almost never happens. I honestly can’t tell you the last time I let fruit hang into October, but based on current forecasts we will ride this nice stretch out and perhaps start picking again in a week or two. Yields are down about 30%, but quality looks poised to surpass 2024. It would take divine intervention to match the 2023 vintage, but if 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that nothing’s certain until the fruit is in. Changing gears - We’re so incredibly grateful for our Wine Club members and are excited to announce an all-day Harvest Winemaker’s Party , featuring CJ’s Western BBQ and live Bluegrass music. We are staying open late. Let’s celebrate! October 18th Capstone Vineyard Harvest Party (12pm–8pm) : Open to everyone! We’ll have live bluegrass music, plenty of food, and of course, great wine. This will be a fun, relaxed day and a perfect chance to catch up, enjoy some music, and hear more about harvest and all the happenings at Capstone. We look forward to seeing you soon and sharing this exciting season with you.