It's Tawny Time Again

by Peter Bell, Winemaker

It’s been quite some time since our last bottle of Fine Old Tawny was sold. This is one wine that can’t be made fast enough to meet the demand, and the 40 or so cases per year that we put out tend to get snapped up quickly. So this is what it must feel like to have your wines on allocation!

Fun With Fortifieds

Peter Howe, our jack-of-all-trades of long standing, is my go-to guy when I need to know about scheduling the bottling of our wine. He does a monthly inventory of our case goods, fills two or three orders a week from our wholesalers, and ships wine down to the tasting room every Friday. So when some product or other is getting low, he’ll be the one to notice.

A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about something non-wine-related, and then he tossed off a casual addendum: “Oh, and by the way, we’re almost out of Ruby Port.” Port is one of the products we are particularly proud of around here, given that the making of it’s such a challenge and that it has such a loyal and perennial following, so the need to make more of it is always met with eager anticipation. It’s our prompt to assemble samples from the many, disparate barrels of Port we have in the winery at any given time, and commence to make a blend that conforms to our house style.