Walk into almost any winery this week and you’ll see the same thing: equipment everywhere, barrels tucked into every open spot, and crews doing their best to move fruit through a cellar that already feels packed. Harvest always brings some level of chaos, but this year the space squeeze seems to be hitting harder than usual. And when the cellar is this tight, it quietly changes how winemakers make decisions. Not in big, obvious ways — but in the small, practical choices that add up over the course of a vintage. That’s where the hidden costs start to show themselves. 1. Lots Are Being Shifted Earlier Than Planned A full cellar forces movement. Not thoughtful, deliberately timed movement — just movement. When every open vessel is already promised to incoming fruit, winemakers end up: racking earlier transferring before a lot is truly settled finishing fermentations in whatever vessel is available consolidating lots sooner than planned None of these decisions a

A draft Napa County Regional Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (RCAAP) has been released for public comment. The draft and related documents can be found at https://climateactionnapa.konveio.com/  Comments are due by September 30, 2025. This draft has been in development for many years, and covers the County of Napa, the Cities of American Canyon, Calistoga, Napa, and St. Helena, and the Town of Yountville. It includes Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets of up to 85 percent by 2045. At the same time, it aims to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2045, primarily by reforestation of burned areas of the County to promote natural carbon sequestration and removing GHGs from the atmosphere. The draft discusses 21 GHG reduction strategies with 46 GHG reduction measures across seven emissions sectors, (though the draft only quantifies the impact of 17 of those measures). The seven sectors, in declining order of their listed percentage of GHG Emissions, are: On-Road Tr

OUR FIVE TOP MARKETING PRIORITIES FOR 2024 TACKLE THE NEW YEAR LIKE A BOSS If you’re like most of us, the holiday marketing campaigns are well underway, and you’re now focusing on next year’s budgets and plans. Choosing your marketing priorities for 2024 is a bit like assembling IKEA furniture—you’re looking for simple, clean lines and straightforward instructions. But, you soon realize you are missing some tools to assemble the Järvfjället and wonder if you should have gone with the Ödmjuk instead. So grab your metaphorical Allen wrench, and let’s build a marketing strategy that’s as sturdy as it is stylish, with just the right amount of snarky commentary along the way. 1. KNOW THY CUSTOMER Your customers aren’t generic – they are unique and won’t be won over by vague, generic messages. If you write copy like everyone else and post the same boring stock bottle shots like everyone else, it’s like you&

How have natural corks stayed on top of the wine world? Antonio Amorim’s efforts to make the cork business more innovative and sustainable have a lot to do with it Antonio Amorim has seen the closure industry change dramatically during his two decades at the helm of his family's 150-year-old cork business. (Courtesy of Amorim Cork) For centuries, cork has been the primary method of closing wine bottles. Then in the late 20th century came cheaper stoppers and—though not without some controversy—the value end of the market was suddenly awash in bottles topped with colorful plastic “corks” or metal screwcaps. That would have been alarming enough for a family cork business founded in 1870. But at the same time, high-end wineries were facing a problem with TCA taint, which could make wines smell and taste like musty cardboard or—in a way even worse for the producers—muted and boring, without being obviously flawed. The problem was largely blam

Afternoon Brief, August 23rd

Bay Area Wineries Need Oak Barrels Right Now. But Thousands Are Missing: California’s 2022 grape harvest is under way, but many wineries are missing a key component for wine production: new oak barrels...

The InnoVint team sat down with Brassfield Estate to understand what caused them to make a change in winery software from vintrace to InnoVint. The team, led by head winemaker, Carlos Valadez, told us about problems they had after stepping away from InnoVint for a short time due to a change in winemaking leadership.  And though they realized their mistake early on, they couldn’t switch back until after the 2020 harvest, making for a tough season.  “At first, the software that we switched to looked great…but then once we started doing the work, putting in weight tags, and trying to do work orders, we decided it was more work than it was worth. We realized that we had switched away from InnoVint at a terrible time…just a couple of months before we started picking’” says Joy Tackett, Production Assistant. Before digging into their experience further, it might be helpful for you to know a bit about the history of Brassfield.  History:&

Fredericksburg, Texas (March 1, 2021) – World-renowned and critically acclaimed Consulting Winemaker Jean Hoefliger is proud to be joining the Texas Wine Collective for the 2021 growing season. Jean will immediately begin work with the existing winemaking teams at Brennan Vineyards and Lost Oak Winery to enhance estate farming practices and wine quality. In 2005, […] The post World-Renowned Consulting Winemaker Jean Hoefliger Joins Texas Wine Collective appeared first on Wine Industry Advisor. Url:https://wineindustryadvisor.com/2021/03/04/ean-hoefliger-joins-texas-wine-collective?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ean-hoefliger-joins-texas-wine-collective Published Date:Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:48:45 +0000