It's not for the faint of heart Going no-till certainly has been picking up steam in recent years, and overall it’s a good thing. When I first got involved in viticulture back in 2010 I was living in Italy. Like a lot of Mediterranean viticultural areas, there was a tendency to disc everything all the time. If you didn’t have a barren wasteland with vines poking out of it, you weren’t a good farmer. Anything you couldn’t get to with a tractor you sprayed with herbicide. One of my first vineyard jobs in Italy was spraying glyphosate out of a backpack sprayer all spring. I felt like I was in the final scene of the Godfather! Minus the dying part. Herbicide: the new four-letter word Mentalities have shifted since then both in Europe and here in the states. All in all it’s a good shift. We’ve all seen places that have gone on for years and years using herbicide to a point where you don’t even need to spray it anymore because that soil is so d

With a nod to our ever-popular Awards Night Gala, the event now offers a glamorous evening (one-night-only) celebration, where guests will be the very first to learn which three wineries take home TOP HONORS as Sweepstake Winning Wines! The Academy Awards-style Gala will roll out the red carpet for this memorable evening as you mingle and savor the flavors of a delightful grazing experience, showcasing culinary delights and the finest wines. Be dazzled by the lights, camera, and action, spotlighting Sonoma County's best harvest offerings on October 12th from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the Grace Pavilion at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.  TICKETS HERE  The cocktail party-style event will offer up to 1,500 industry food-savvy and wine-savvy guests the opportunity to taste Sonoma County's winning wines and culinary bites from top restaurants and food purveyors. They will also witness the unveiling of the coveted  Sweepstake Wine Competition winners. The Harvest

Flextank Helps La Mesa Vineyards Deliver Award-Winning Wines Sweep Gold Medals At Three Prestigious California Wine Competitions  La Mesa Vineyards uses Flextank vessels to capture gold medals  and create top small-batch artisan-style wines of exceptional quality. Vancouver, Wash. – August 06, 2024 – Flextank, the leader in advanced oxygen-permeable polyethylene tanks for wine, cider, spirits and craft beverage fermentation and storage, today announced one of the company’s premier Flextank customers, La Mesa Vineyards, recently swept prestigious industry wine awards in three separate competitions. The Amador County, Calif.-based La Mesa Vineyards received several Gold, Double Gold and Best-in-Class awards at the respected 2024 Peninsula Underground "Under the Radar" California wine competition, 2024 Orange County Fair Commercial Wine competition, and at the 2024 California State Fair competition. Competition is Fierce. Flextank Helps Deliver Awar

No matter how well your brand sells, a customer cannot purchase it if it’s out of stock. The key to preventing lost revenue (for you, your distributors, and the retailer) is taking an active role.  Being out of stock on the retail shelf or restaurant wine list immediately hits your short-term revenue. More significant is the long-term consequences to your brand’s reputation and trade relationships. Here are 5 of the most common reasons for out-of-stock inventory and how to remedy them. 1. Inaccurate inventory management The importance of reliable, accurate inventory data at the distributor inventory level cannot be overstated.  Suppliers can participate with their distributors’ insights and avoid inventory interruptions by actively monitoring distributors’ inventory and the inventory at the store level.  Essential metrics every winery, distillery, and brewery must work towards gathering or at a minimum have a pulse on are: Current on-hand invent

Afternoon Brief, June 28th

Napa Winery Turns Wine to Water: A bottling line mishap left some red faces at a winery that sent samples to a competition...

JUDGING - November 8th & 9th, 2022 *Early Bird deadline - October 21th ENTRY DEADLINE - October 28th, 2022 WINES TO BE DELIVERED BY  - October 28th, 2022 The Harvest Challenge is a wine competition that bases its judging on a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and wine making savoir-faire, which contribute to give the specific personality to the wine. In other competitions, this factor is ignored. At the Harvest Challenge, judges taste wines with other wines of the same appellation. Thus, with cross-regional competition removed, the inherent quality of wines can be seen without the influences that sometimes eclipse even a wine of very high quality. According to Harvest Challenge spokesman, Christopher Sawyer, “The Harvest Challenge is a judge’s dream come true. Beyond varietal category and price point, this one-of-a-kind