Vintage 2025: Flowering

It is June. We are in the throes of shoot positiong and shoot removal, and despite all the rain that we have been having, and now a heat wave, all of our varieties are at some stage of flowering.

However, not all of the varieties are at the same stage of flowering. The Chardonnay and the Barbera are at the early stages of fruitset. The next variety to be further in bloom is the Cabernet Franc followed by the Chenin Blanc, Auxerrois and finally the Cabernet Sauvignon.
It's time to update the Annual Cycle of Growth chart.

Years of keeping the annual cycle of growth gives us some idea of when flowering and fruitset will be. The heat wave is probably accelerating flowering and fruitset, which is a good thing.
Right after fruitset, the tiny grapes are not securely attached by their pedicel so any manipulation of the shoots is not a good thing so we adjust where we work based on what stage of flowering or fruitset our varieties are at.
The heat wave is forcing us to be at the vineyard at 6 am and today we stopped working at 8 am since the feel-like temperature was 90 degrees!

International Chenin Blanc Day

International Chenin Blanc Day was on June 14th and of course we must celebrate! Our son and his wife gave us two bottles of Chenin, one from Mexico and one from France. We added our own Chenin and did a side by side tasting. The three wines were:

• 2023 Carrodilla Chenin Blanc
• 2018 Silex Noir Vouvray
• 2019 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc

Our son scored the Carrodilla wine when he and his wife went to dinner at Shipwright's Daughter in Mystic. They kindly left some for us to taste. He also got the Silex Noir for us. We opened one of our 2019 Chenin Blanc to complete the tasting.

We paired the wines with a lemon, parmesan pasta with hazelnuts on top.

The 2023 Carrodilla Chenin Blanc is unusual in that it comes from Mexico, made in the Valle de Guadalupe! My husband did some research on this wine. The vineyard is at 900 feet elevation. The grapes are farmed organically and can be harvested in August. This wine is 100% Chenin Blanc. We liked the wine and thought it paired well with the pasta. I thought that the backend had a little grip, but my husband thought that the backend dropped off.
The next wine we tried was the 2018 Silex Noir Vouvray. We know that this wine will be sweet because it comes from the Loire village of Vouvray. It was a little difficult pairing this with the lemony pasta. The wine is barrel aged. I didn't taste the oak on it, it was seamlessly integrated into the wine, but another food pairing would have been better.
We then tried our 2019 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc. Not going to lie, we liked our own wine and the pairing with the pasta. A thought came to us, we need to try this side by side tasting with our son and his wife. They had left for home by the time we did this tasting but it is something that we should do the next time they are here. It was an interesting tasting of various Chenin Blancs on International Chenin Blanc Day.

2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Chardonnay

A few days ago, we had our friends Mary and Barry over for dinner. Mary is a Chardonnay aficionado, but very particular in her style of Chardonnay. For dinner, we prepared a Greek meal with spanakopita (spinach pie) as the appetizer. We paired this 2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Linda Vista Chardonnay with the spanakopita. It was a beautiful pairing and all of us enjoyed the Matthiasson Chardonnay.
We have been watching many episodes of Steve Matthiasson and his wife, Jill, on SOMM TV. My husband has been especially interested in Steve Matthiasson because his philosophy of winemaking is like ours. In fact, when we went to Napa in February, we tried to visit them, but Steve was unavailable. On their website, they describe the Linda Vista vineyard:
"The Linda Vista Vineyard is just across the creek behind our house. The West Oak Knoll area where we live is one of the classic Chardonnay spots in Napa—Chardonnay from just behind us won the famous Paris tasting in 1976. The cool winds off the San Pablo Bay bring acidity and freshness, while the Napa sun gives flesh and ripeness. The 25-year old vines were originally planted by Beringer, and we’re proud to take our turn caring for them as the vineyard develops maturity. Certified Organic."
We loved the Matthiasson Chardonnay so much that my husband is thinking of purchasing more!

Passionfruit Estate: The Genesis of Our Label

My husband and I had many iterations of label designs before we finally agreed on one that we both liked. It was a Google Earth view that showed our vineyard at the head of the Mystic River. My husband took that view and stylized it and that has become our label.
The Google Earth view shown below on the left hand side has our vineyard circled in red. It also shows the Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium landmarks as references. The right hand side shows what my husband did with the view. It's more of a tilted view which not only shows Mason's Island, but Fisher's Island as well as Long Island and the Connecticut coastline in our area.

Through time we have had Michelle in California and Kimberly here in Stonington help us refine the label with the appropriate font styles and sizes to achieve the right balance. Sometimes we forget to tell the people who come to purchase our wines what the label is about. We hope they can figure out that it is a view from our vineyard.