Thank you to all that sent us cellar questions!

The two overarching topics that emerged from this round were Cabernet Franc, specifically different vintages of L’Oublié, and old vintages of our Pinot Noir. It’s quite fitting, really, considering that the splendor of age is the front-and-center of our holiday release with the 2012 Black Ball shining in full force.

I recently wrote that our craft, in its essence, demands an undying curiosity towards the ‘familiar’ turn of the seasons and openness towards unforeseen results, and that when working with Nature - especially in Niagara - one really has no other choice apart from living on the edge and trusting forces bigger than us. At the time, the topic in question was a showcase of two new vintages of cuvées that are relatively new to us.

There are some wines that exist on horizons. Or maybe, they themselves are the horizon.

The horizon between the devil-may-care attitude of youth and the wisdom of old-age.

The line separating, yet connecting the erudition of tradition and the wildness of spirit.

A lot of you often ask what we do in the middle of winter and before the growing season has begun. From the outside it must look like quite the sleepy part of the year, but we're here to assure you in reality it's not at all.

Yes, the chaos and 3 month non-stop adrenaline rush of harvest is behind us; and yes - for the most part, the fermentations are complete and so is their incessant need for our focused attention and for making the right decisions at the right moments, fingers crossed. 

There’s an old quote from Charlie Parker: “First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that s**t and just play.”

There’s always a beginning, a start, a path chosen – and then, there’s another beginning – the one of Truth. The moment when all you’ve learned so far, all you’ve observed and absorbed through your senses – whether consciously or subconsciously - starts forming patterns and making sense. The beginning of knowledge lived and experienced; the emergence of Order out of the tormenting beauty of Chaos.

It’s a funny thing wine – it can be easily understood as a simple and straightforward entity, if you so choose; and yet that simple thing, as old as civilization, has resisted human attempts at its complete understanding for millennia. That being said, if there’s one incontrovertible truth about wine, it must be that it is an inexhaustible subject. It encompasses so many areas of inquiry; there’s a multitude of topics woven within it, and such an immense number of questions. And of course, to the frustration of many, very few of these questions have a straight answer.

Long-time readers of our newsletter know that it almost always tends to be contemplative - more so of a letter sharing what our wines have been evoking in us, how we see them or how they've surprised us - and, of course, the latter happens more often than not. We want to continue this tradition here and hope you are curious to learn about how we view these ever-changing wine characters and what's the inspiration behind the birth of each.