43. First Harvest as a Full Time Wine Maker
I find it very encouraging to look backward, though I don’t always remember to. One year ago I was very unsure of the future of Alta Marfa. After two years of searching, we still had no place to make our wine. We had so far been unsuccessful at finding a source of funding, and we were running out of time. I have a few pages in my notebook from January 2021 which contain thoughts like “which things to sell first”, “where should we live?” and “can I get my old job back?” I spent a lot of time that January feeling like the project I had been working on for the last five years would likely come to an end. Now, a year later we have our own winery and we obtained loans that allowed us to make 17,000+ bottles of wine in 2021. We took big steps in 2021, and 2022 will be just as challenging.
The following is a look back at the 2021 harvest season.
This tank full of Tempranillo, from Robert Clay Vineyards, was the first fermentation of the 2021 harvest season.
Paulina, Edward and Stephen bailed me out. I met them in Sonora. They drove from Houston and London respectively to help me pick grapes at High Cross Vineyard. We left the Motel 6 where we were staying at 2am in order to have time to finish our harvest and drive the fruit to the winery before the sun came up when it would be too hot to pick or transport the grapes. We picked Tempranillo until about 9 am, then called it. We picked almost two tons of grapes that night.
After picking, Paulina fell asleep before we made it out of the driveway.
The High Cross Tempranillo joining the Robert Clay Tempranillo in the winery. Our new winery in Marfa was not complete in time for harvest, so we made our 2021 wines at Slate Mill Wine Collective in Fredericksburg.
Alta Marfa’s 2021 harvest consisted of 22 tons of grapes from 7 vineyards in Texas and one in New Mexico. There is no way that I could have processed all 22 tons of grapes, driven all 9,000 miles, and hand-picked grapes without help. Tyler Wolz (pictured), David Newitt, James Gross and Wyatt Eubanks work at Slate Mill Wine Collective and were absolutely crucial to my success this year. They cleaned tanks and bins, forklifted, loaded the press, steamed barrels, unloaded the press, and filled barrels with me this year. A huge thank you to all four of them.
I caught this beautiful sunset just as I arrived with my trailer full of empty bins at Robert Clay Vineyards. We picked Touriga Nacional later that night.
Cooper, of The Austin Winery, who also buys grapes from Robert Clay Vineyards, deciding which row to pick first.
A beautiful cluster of Touriga Nacional on the vine at Robert Clay.
We found this pretty spider in a bin of Tempranillo!
Dan McLaughlin, of Robert Clay Vineyards, and I picking Merlot. Dan continues to be a great mentor and friend.
This is right at the end of my 12-hour journey hauling grapes from New Mexico to the winery in the Hill Country. That’s two tons of Big Lunch in the egg, with one ton of Wee Chef on the left and one of Oui Chef on the right.
A new wine from Forbidden Desert Vineyard in New Mexico this year. This is half Pinot Noir and Half Chardonnay.
Grapes
Eggs full of grapes!
This big stack is all 2021 Alta Marfa wines!
And now a break from harvest…
What do you see in this picture?
How about now? Anything?
Wild grape vines!
vitis arizonica to be exact. This is a grape species native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. I plan to return to this vine growing by the roadside in the Davis Mountains and take some cuttings. My plan is to propagate them and observe them, maybe their fruit will make an interesting wine someday.
The winery is done! We have received the keys!
We aren’t quite moved in yet, but we have wine! So come visit use in Marfa!
We have just released a new wine: Sobrino. The Story of this wine comes in two parts:
1) What’s inside the bottle:
This is a traditional method sparkling wine (think champagne) but is very non-traditional in a few ways as well. This wine is 100% Tempranillo, which you may be familiar with in the form of a big tannic red wine, probably from Spain, that you might drink while eating a steak. Sobrino however, could not be further from that version of Tempranillo. Every decision I made when making this wine was made with the goal of making the final form as refreshing, light, juicy and energetic as possible. This wine is designed to make it very very unlikely that you’ll be able to have just one sip, or even one glass. Click HERE to read a full rundown of how this wine was made.
2) What’s on the outside of the bottle:
Sobrino means ‘nephew’ in Spanish. Last December Katie and I welcomed our first nephew when my brother, George, and his wife, Eilis, had their first child. This wine was named and the label designed in Baby George’s honor.
And now please enjoy the following series of goofy pictures featuring me, Sobrino and the statue of liberty.
Katie and I attended two natural wine festivals in New York in the fall of 2021. This was the first time our wine was introduced to the public outside of Texas. We received very positive feedback from everyone who tried the wines, and we made lots of new friends who do what we do in different parts of the country, including North Carolina, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.
We took a train from New York City, up the Hudson River to the town of Hudson for the Peripheral Wine Festival.
The Wild World Festival took place a few days later in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.
As is tradition, I will finish off this post with a sunset. This picture is taken in the fledgling Grand Prix Vineyard.