Words from winemaker Terry Culton . . .

I am a great fan of the statement "the wine is made in the vineyard". My focus in winemaking is to allow the terroir to show through in the finished wine. To this end, I prefer to employ a more natural style of winemaking. From the beginning, we allow the native yeast to ferment the must into wine. We then age the wine for 14 to 24 months in French and European oak barrels (20% to 30% new oak, depending upon the varietals). We do not filter our red wines and almost all of them are unfined. When we do fine a red wine, it is only with egg whites - not the more modern chemical base agents. If you are lucky enough, as I am, to get fruit form world class vineyards like our HMR estate and Viking estate vineyards, the last thing you want to do is to cover up that outstanding fruit with excessive amounts of oak. Rather, I prefer to let the calcareous limestone soils that we are blessed with in our vineyards to show through in the finished wine. Oak is a great spice and I like to use it in that way - to accent and lift the wine, to round it out and give it the finishing touch that hopefully has you enjoying its flavors from the tip of your tongue to the back of you pallet.

Cheers,
Terry M. Culton