Winemaking services

Quality fruit is key to making quality wine. I work with established estate vineyards and grower contracts, help a client pick the best varietals for their land or climate, and help make sure that the highest quality fruit is used to produce your wine.

• Visit the client’s vineyards to ascertain that the grape source/ vineyard management is consistent with the winery’s goals for quality
• Determine potential gems within a vineyard site that can be used to create reserve tier wines
• Communicate with growers: Work with the grower and the buyer, make sure that the highest quality fruit reaches the winery
• Harvest sampling & calling a pick
• Schedule and logistics of fruit picking and fruit receival

Provide a way for wineries to bring in expertise when and where they need it on a part time basis. This includes providing suggestions on how to improve various aspects of making the wine during harvest or the entire year.

• Work as a liaison between client & custom crush facilities
• Prescribe fermentation monitoring and treatment
• Examine all winemaking SOPs. Work with winemaking staff to develop and implement new protocols if necessary
• Experience with hands-on micro-lots to tank-processed mega-lots
• Correcting musts pre-ferment
• Monitor wines during fermentation daily
• Determine press protocols for optimal flavor extraction
• Work with winery staff to monitor malo-lactic fermentation, barrel aging, and lot selection for various programs by tier.

Enhance the style of the wines that have been established by the winery or help the winery create a new style. This involves understanding the story that the owner wants the wine to tell.

• Review barrel programs and help the client have wood sources and oak aging that work with the wine style
• Blend new wine or existing inventory to take the quality to another level
• Select and assist in the buying of wine on the bulk market…
• Improve fruit profile, color stability, overall complexity and positive mouthfeel characteristics
• Guide tasting trials
• Finish a wine to prepare it for bottling and aging
• Be at winery for bottling to insure wines and packaging all are at expected standards.