Well, it’s certainly been an interesting growing season. A cool, wet spring delayed bud break and stunted shoot growth, and early sightings of Spotted Lantern Fly raised concern of another pest-filled harvest. On top of that, we’ve been warned about an especially severe hurricane season. Thankfully, we’ve only had a couple of flood watches — one lasting 25 days and another for 30. It’s times like these when the importance of site selection really shows. Despite intense downpours and prolonged wetting periods, our vineyard drains remarkably well. Water quickly filters through the rocky soils and runs off the hillside, ensuring the vines never sit saturated for too long. In fact, all this rain has been a bit of a blessing. Our two acres of new plantings look like they’re on steroids, and the mature vines haven’t looked this vibrant in years — a welcome sight after two dry seasons. Our aquifers are also finally replenished! This vintage is looking a little suspect for red wines — but no worries there. We’re well-stocked with exceptional reds from the last two vintages. We keep running out of white, sparkling and rosé so I had already planned to lean into those wines this year. Keep your eyes out for something special: a white Cabernet Franc, or as we like to call it, Blanc de Franc! We recently bottled our Lucienne and Roussanne — both are stunning wines. Up next is our final bottling before harvest: Sparkling C2. Yep, it’s back! This year’s blend is 93% Chardonnay and 7% Chenin Blanc (most of the Chenin went into the Lucienne blend). For our Q3 wine club allocation , you’ll be receiving Francis, St. Dominic, and Roussanne. We’ll be running cards on file Wednesday, July 30th , and wines will be available for pickup starting Thursday, July 31st . If you need to update your information, please email us at info@capstonevineyards.com . And finally, we have a new face behind that email — Anita, our new tasting room manager. She brings a strong hospitality background, is very engaging and a joy to be around. Jess left some big shoes to fill, and Anita is already stepping in with grace and enthusiasm. Come by to pick up your wines, bring a picnic, and say hello!
As we step into the heart of winter, it’s exciting to imagine what the season might bring. After several mild, low-precipitation winters, it feels like we’re due for a long, cold, and snowy stretch—and the Farmer’s Almanac seems to agree.
I’m writing this after a brisk walk up the mountain, prompted by an unexpected adventure: I got the tractor stuck at the bottom of the property clearing snow. While our tracked tractors are fantastic for preventing soil erosion, reducing compaction, and gripping well in the vineyard, they’re not exactly ideal for navigating snow and ice. Going downhill? No problem. Getting back up? That’s another story entirely!
We’re thrilled to be kicking off our third year operating Capstone. The first two years have been an incredible learning journey, helping us lay a strong foundation to build upon.
2025 promises to be an exciting and pivotal year as we continue to push boundaries and grow. We’re preparing to finance, build, and equip a state-of-the-art production facility, spread 6
As the weather cools down, things are heating up in the cellar and tasting room!
First off, a big thank you to Big Whisky Beef Co, Cottonwood Ranch, and Cypress Street Coffee Roasters for making the ‘Cattle Battle’ such a success. We’re thrilled by the enthusiasm for these events and will be hosting more in the future—keep an eye out for dates, and be sure to grab your tickets quickly; they sold out in less than 48 hours!
I’m excited to announce our next culinary showdown, the ‘Coq Fight’ in January, featuring two poultry farms battling it out. In the Spring, we’ll host ‘Of Swine and Wine’ , Summer will be a ‘Garden Party’ for our vegetarian friends, and many more delicious events to come.
Join us this Sunday, November 3rd, for our third Sparkling Sunday! Enjoy sweet and savory pastries from Melania’s Bakery, mimosas, and live music by John Lamirande, a retired Army musician with an impressive 27-year career. It’s the perfect way to relax before Veteran’s Day weekend.
From November 7th to 11th, we invite
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
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.
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.
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!
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
Well, it’s certainly been an interesting growing season. A cool, wet spring delayed bud break and stunted shoot growth, and early sightings of Spotted Lantern Fly raised concern of another pest-filled harvest. On top of that, we’ve been warned about an especially severe hurricane season. Thankfully, we’ve only had a couple of flood watches — one lasting 25 days and another for 30. It’s times like these when the importance of site selection really shows. Despite intense downpours and prolonged wetting periods, our vineyard drains remarkably well. Water quickly filters through the rocky soils and runs off the hillside, ensuring the vines never sit saturated for too long. In fact, all this rain has been a bit of a blessing. Our two acres of new plantings look like they’re on steroids, and the mature vines haven’t looked this vibrant in years — a welcome sight after two dry seasons. Our aquifers are also finally replenished! This vintage is looking a little suspect for red wines — but no worries there. We’re well-stocked with exceptional reds from the last two vintages. We keep running out of white, sparkling and rosé so I had already planned to lean into those wines this year. Keep your eyes out for something special: a white Cabernet Franc, or as we like to call it, Blanc de Franc! We recently bottled our Lucienne and Roussanne — both are stunning wines. Up next is our final bottling before harvest: Sparkling C2. Yep, it’s back! This year’s blend is 93% Chardonnay and 7% Chenin Blanc (most of the Chenin went into the Lucienne blend). For our Q3 wine club allocation , you’ll be receiving Francis, St. Dominic, and Roussanne. We’ll be running cards on file Wednesday, July 30th , and wines will be available for pickup starting Thursday, July 31st . If you need to update your information, please email us at info@capstonevineyards.com . And finally, we have a new face behind that email — Anita, our new tasting room manager. She brings a strong hospitality background, is very engaging and a joy to be around. Jess left some big shoes to fill, and Anita is already stepping in with grace and enthusiasm. Come by to pick up your wines, bring a picnic, and say hello!
As we step into the heart of winter, it’s exciting to imagine what the season might bring. After several mild, low-precipitation winters, it feels like we’re due for a long, cold, and snowy stretch—and the Farmer’s Almanac seems to agree.
I’m writing this after a brisk walk up the mountain, prompted by an unexpected adventure: I got the tractor stuck at the bottom of the property clearing snow. While our tracked tractors are fantastic for preventing soil erosion, reducing compaction, and gripping well in the vineyard, they’re not exactly ideal for navigating snow and ice. Going downhill? No problem. Getting back up? That’s another story entirely!
We’re thrilled to be kicking off our third year operating Capstone. The first two years have been an incredible learning journey, helping us lay a strong foundation to build upon.
2025 promises to be an exciting and pivotal year as we continue to push boundaries and grow. We’re preparing to finance, build, and equip a state-of-the-art production facility, spread 6
As the weather cools down, things are heating up in the cellar and tasting room!
First off, a big thank you to Big Whisky Beef Co, Cottonwood Ranch, and Cypress Street Coffee Roasters for making the ‘Cattle Battle’ such a success. We’re thrilled by the enthusiasm for these events and will be hosting more in the future—keep an eye out for dates, and be sure to grab your tickets quickly; they sold out in less than 48 hours!
I’m excited to announce our next culinary showdown, the ‘Coq Fight’ in January, featuring two poultry farms battling it out. In the Spring, we’ll host ‘Of Swine and Wine’ , Summer will be a ‘Garden Party’ for our vegetarian friends, and many more delicious events to come.
Join us this Sunday, November 3rd, for our third Sparkling Sunday! Enjoy sweet and savory pastries from Melania’s Bakery, mimosas, and live music by John Lamirande, a retired Army musician with an impressive 27-year career. It’s the perfect way to relax before Veteran’s Day weekend.
From November 7th to 11th, we invite
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
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.
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.
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!
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
Well, it’s certainly been an interesting growing season. A cool, wet spring delayed bud break and stunted shoot growth, and early sightings of Spotted Lantern Fly raised concern of another pest-filled harvest. On top of that, we’ve been warned about an especially severe hurricane season. Thankfully, we’ve only had a couple of flood watches — one lasting 25 days and another for 30. It’s times like these when the importance of site selection really shows. Despite intense downpours and prolonged wetting periods, our vineyard drains remarkably well. Water quickly filters through the rocky soils and runs off the hillside, ensuring the vines never sit saturated for too long. In fact, all this rain has been a bit of a blessing. Our two acres of new plantings look like they’re on steroids, and the mature vines haven’t looked this vibrant in years — a welcome sight after two dry seasons. Our aquifers are also finally replenished! This vintage is looking a little suspect for red wines — but no worries there. We’re well-stocked with exceptional reds from the last two vintages. We keep running out of white, sparkling and rosé so I had already planned to lean into those wines this year. Keep your eyes out for something special: a white Cabernet Franc, or as we like to call it, Blanc de Franc! We recently bottled our Lucienne and Roussanne — both are stunning wines. Up next is our final bottling before harvest: Sparkling C2. Yep, it’s back! This year’s blend is 93% Chardonnay and 7% Chenin Blanc (most of the Chenin went into the Lucienne blend). For our Q3 wine club allocation , you’ll be receiving Francis, St. Dominic, and Roussanne. We’ll be running cards on file Wednesday, July 30th , and wines will be available for pickup starting Thursday, July 31st . If you need to update your information, please email us at info@capstonevineyards.com . And finally, we have a new face behind that email — Anita, our new tasting room manager. She brings a strong hospitality background, is very engaging and a joy to be around. Jess left some big shoes to fill, and Anita is already stepping in with grace and enthusiasm. Come by to pick up your wines, bring a picnic, and say hello!
As we step into the heart of winter, it’s exciting to imagine what the season might bring. After several mild, low-precipitation winters, it feels like we’re due for a long, cold, and snowy stretch—and the Farmer’s Almanac seems to agree.
I’m writing this after a brisk walk up the mountain, prompted by an unexpected adventure: I got the tractor stuck at the bottom of the property clearing snow. While our tracked tractors are fantastic for preventing soil erosion, reducing compaction, and gripping well in the vineyard, they’re not exactly ideal for navigating snow and ice. Going downhill? No problem. Getting back up? That’s another story entirely!
We’re thrilled to be kicking off our third year operating Capstone. The first two years have been an incredible learning journey, helping us lay a strong foundation to build upon.
2025 promises to be an exciting and pivotal year as we continue to push boundaries and grow. We’re preparing to finance, build, and equip a state-of-the-art production facility, spread 6
As the weather cools down, things are heating up in the cellar and tasting room!
First off, a big thank you to Big Whisky Beef Co, Cottonwood Ranch, and Cypress Street Coffee Roasters for making the ‘Cattle Battle’ such a success. We’re thrilled by the enthusiasm for these events and will be hosting more in the future—keep an eye out for dates, and be sure to grab your tickets quickly; they sold out in less than 48 hours!
I’m excited to announce our next culinary showdown, the ‘Coq Fight’ in January, featuring two poultry farms battling it out. In the Spring, we’ll host ‘Of Swine and Wine’ , Summer will be a ‘Garden Party’ for our vegetarian friends, and many more delicious events to come.
Join us this Sunday, November 3rd, for our third Sparkling Sunday! Enjoy sweet and savory pastries from Melania’s Bakery, mimosas, and live music by John Lamirande, a retired Army musician with an impressive 27-year career. It’s the perfect way to relax before Veteran’s Day weekend.
From November 7th to 11th, we invite
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
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.
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.
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!
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