This Thursday and Friday we picked the first grapes at Charles Vineyard. Whereas in a typical year we start picking still wine in the beginning of September, we were just picking some rose’ grapes and starting in on some still Pinot Noir this week.

Originally posted here:
Harvest Arrives!

Finally, everything looks purple out there in the Pinot Noir blocks! Veraison is pretty much through and we’ll do a berry sample tomorrow to establish a baseline for sugars, acid and pH. We’re estimating that we might be picking for our dry Pinot Noir rose in a few weeks

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Getting Closer to Harvest at Charles Vineyard

This week was bottling week for our 2010 Semillon (with ingredients listed!) and our 2010 estate Pinot Noirs.

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Bottling – 2010 Semillon and Pinot Noirs!

One big lesson that I’ve learned from launching a new business, and launching a business in what seems to be a never-ending recession, is that things don’t always align with your expectations. I don’t mean this in a bad way — we launched our first wines to amazing acclaim from Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, The SF Chronicle, Wine & Spirits …

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Persistence Sucks

It’s an interesting life up here in Boonville. As I was working away a few minutes ago, a bobcat leisurely sauntered right through our front yard, stopping to smell some plants, then moving on into our neighbor‘s vineyard. Unfortunately, I couldn’t capture one good photo through the glass

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Foursight in the News & A Wild Animal Visit

Last year – 2010 – was one of the latest harvests we’ve had at Charles Vineyard. We were roughly three weeks behind our typical schedule.

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Veraison Time … but not this year

We recently took a few days off (gasp) and traveled an hour north of Fort Bragg, to the Lost Coast.

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Lost Coast Photos

Today we a big landmark for our winery: after going back and forth with the TTB for months, we’ve finally gotten our approval to bottle our 2010 Semillon this August with an ingredients statement and verbiage that states the wine is suitable for vegetarians and vegans. The TTB has been resistant to allowing our ingredients statement, vowing that we must have missed at least the yeast (nope – we use wild!), and if not yeast then acid, enzymes or something else.

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Foursight: The First Anderson Valley Winery to List Ingredients!

Today was my attempt to reason with the TTB and explain to them why you absolutely CAN make wine with just grapes and sulfur and that it would be okay for our ingredients statement to list only those. Little did I know I would end up having an entire discussion about why wild ML is not allowed on wine labels (surprise!). In a process that has now stretched about four months, I’ve been struggling to get a label approved by the TTB that allows us to list our ingredients for the Foursight 2010 Semillon (see my previous posts about this issue)

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Wild ML Not an Allowed Statement on Wine Labels

In yet another episode of Kristy vs. the TTB ( the government agency responsible for approving our wine labels), Kristy’s still not winning and the TTB is still insisting that it’s not possible to make wine from just grapes and sulfur

Continue reading here:
Why The TTB Says Natural Wine Isn’t Possible