Thoughts
Awakening & Remembrance
September 14, 2025
– Craig Williams
I can’t remember the day and time of the dinner other than it was in the late 1970s.
I don’t even recall the food I ate. Those details have long been abandoned by my memory. But the wine, oh yes, the wine I very much remember as if it was yesterday.
I was invited to a celebration of the approaching wedding for our winery’s CFO; a bachelor party of sorts. The venue was at Au Relais - now shuttered years ago - and at the time, one of the best restaurants in the North Bay region. There were 5-6 of us from the winery, each bringing a bottle of wine to share over the course of the meal. I have no idea what I brought although it probably was a Bordeaux. I wanted to know more about those wines and had begun to collect them as my meager budget would allow.
It was towards the end of the meal when the restaurant staff brought new wines glasses to the table. Those, now out of favor, heavy, fish-bowl glasses one might use for eating ice cream as much as wine. Joe Phelps, who arranged this dinner and had kept his bottle under the table, handed a Burgundy-shaped bottle to the waitstaff.
What came around into our glasses was a 1969 Bouchard Père et Fils Beaune 1er Cru Les Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jesus; the “baby Jesus” vineyard as it’s known. The unmistakable, intense perfume of crushed red raspberries rose up from the glass. This was sublime with its red robe glistening in the bowl, incredible fragrance of red fruits, delicious raspberry-cherry flavors and fascinating texture. A wine relished well into the evening. I’ve never forgotten it.
When I think about this wine, this Pinot Noir, it recalls family, people, places and events from almost 50 years ago; how much I thought I knew at the time and how much more I had to learn. It also is a reminder that wine is a pursuit of pleasure, savoring and remembrances. Pinot Noir does that. And we hope our wine brings that sense of enjoyment and recollection to your table.
Why Chardonnay?
April 13, 2025
– Craig Williams
In 1999, I helped relocate and develop vineyards and a winery for Joseph Phelps Vineyards in the western reaches of the Sonoma Coast to continue the production of Chardonnay.
Up until then, our Chardonnay had been sourced from an estate vineyard in the Los Carneros AVA. We were not producing Pinot Noir at the time but remarkably, we planted more acreage of that grape than Chardonnay. I cannot recall the exact reasons for this other than we understood this would be an ideal location as well. It was there that I began to investigate the relationship of multiple selections within a variety to greatly expand upon the number of selections previously cultivated.
Our initial plan in the Willamette Valley was to take an intentional approach to growing and selling grapes, exclusively. Since the valley was already widely recognized as a benchmark for Pinot Noir, we thought it would be sensible to follow that paradigm and focus mostly on Pinot Noir with a small planting of Chardonnay. And yet, we kept thinking about the fact that there were fewer than 1,000 acres planted to Chardonnay in the entire valley in 2010. Certainly there was notable Chardonnay being produced but in very limited quantities. Perhaps the most influential was our location in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. When you stood on the ground and looking across the east-southeast views of the valley, the vineyard shouted: Chardonnay could be great here too!
We soon reconsidered our initial plans to make Pinot the main effort and decided to plant more Chardonnay. This was in part because there was so little available to wineries but also because of our love for the grape. In short, we set about to create a distinct foundation for both grapes that began with developing 2 acres of Chardonnay and 1 acre of Pinot Noir. Today, that ratio has actually increased slightly to 2.5 acres of Chardonnay for every 1 acre of Pinot Noir. With 20 acres of Chardonnay now planted, we are squarely committed to pursuing more expressive, complex and distinctive Chardonnay with a Burgundian reverence for sense of place.
A Community of Vines
October 1, 2024
– Craig Williams
My ambition is to create a wine that captures both the consistent nature of the site and the personality of the vintage, while also showcasing the grape’s inherent beauty.
It may be rich coming from someone who has made wine for 50 years, but in my experience, site and grape selection are more important than any winemaking technique. When it came time to plant X Novo and X Omni vineyards, this experience became a guiding principle.
The specific geologic and climatic qualities of a place are prerequisite and without them, no philosophy of grape growing or technique of winemaking could overcome a deficit there. But presupposing one possesses such a place - and I am convinced we do in our little corner of the Eola-Amity Hills - there is still the matter of what to plant.
We planted a diverse selection of vines, over a dozen different clones for each variety (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay). This is known as a selection massale in Burgundy. It produces a blending in the vineyard, if you will, of unique characteristics, creating a wine greater than the sum of its parts. It mitigates the individual impact of one personality, while allowing the community of vines to amplify the environment in which they reside.
Our goal was simple: blend the grapes in the vineyard rather than in the cellar. If my conviction that site and grape selection are more important than winemaking techniques (see above) is deeply held, then blending in the vineyard, as opposed to the winery, is the wise choice.
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