Surprise release of my 2022 Vintage!

Wrangling great wine out of tortured grapes. Yep, Mama Nature was pissed.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. – Henry Ford

I just bottled them yesterday. First peek at the 2022s!

I’ll talk about them more below, but I wanted you to see them before anything else. And to know that all three of these amazing—and somewhat improbable—red wines are for sale, right now, just to you dear reader with SPECIAL ADVANCE RELEASE PRICING and FREE SHIPPING on orders over $150, at tinyvineyards.com.

Do you remember that harvest of 2022?

Well, I certainly do. For seven straight days in September afternoon temperatures soared above 100°F and barely came down at all during the night. Ten days later it rained, like Noah on a comeback tour. That was the year of the “heat dome,” followed by an “atmospheric river” deluge; we were certainly learning some new weather terms.

Grapes in the vineyards I’m associated with had been ripening beautifully until September 3rd when the temperature first spiked and didn’t really recede. Brix shot up precariously. I remember walking through one of my Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards on the 7th of September taking my weekly Brix and pH measurements, which the week before had been a perfect 23.5°/3.48, and now were 28.6°/3.75! A Brix increase of nearly 1 degree a day is practically unheard of—it’s usually about 1 degree a week at that point in ripening. And if your pH gets near 4 or more, you’re going to have acid shortfalls and you’ll need to acidify your “must” or suffer flabby wine.

Other vineyards I was picking were exhibiting the same spike in sugar. The famous (and to remain nameless) vineyard that was going to be my expensive source of Merlot grapes had spiked to a ridiculous 29.4° and, of course, every Zinfandel grape out there was going diabetic. But, oddly, and perhaps more concerning were a Syrah vineyard and a Malbec vineyard, which had simply shut down. Their Brix measurements would hover in the low 20s with little or no increase for weeks.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I pick before sugars went even higher and/or possible rain came along and suddenly we were dealing with rot and mold? I consulted with everyone I knew and the conventional wisdom had it that the Brix would come down as the heat came down and those vineyards in a state of coma would wake up and finish ripening.

Good advice perhaps, except I didn’t wait to find out. I knew I was in over my head and I was ready to cut my losses. When that “possible rain” suddenly became reality on steroids I pulled the trigger and scheduled my harvests. I very quickly picked 12 different size lots of various kinds of grapes equaling over 10 tons in total, and I dove reluctantly into that perilous pool of fermentation. It proved as challenging as I had feared with high alcohol wracking havoc on the yeast, and heat compromised grapes becoming an inevitable target for microbial spoilage and volatile acidity. I’d never had a stuck fermentation in five years of winemaking. That year I had three. This meant I also had to deal with residual sugar issues.

But I’ve already written way too much about this demanding year in posts that begin here, then here, then here, then here. If you like stories about neophytes and rookies in the face of adversity go back and have a good read! The bottom line is that through selective blending, nearly impossible to understand math and chemistry, incredible and all-natural enological products and breakthroughs, stuck fermentations that finally got unstuck, a couple of really smart guys, and interminable patience on my part over 18 months, three awesome wines emerged.

Of that I am very proud, if not a little mystified.

Enough about your past problems, let’s talk some more about the wine

So, inviting you to buy this 2022 Vintage is like asking you to participate in a wine futures sale. The concept is that you buy a promising wine for a great price very early in its development, sometimes even when it’s still aging in the barrel. Then, once it’s bottled, you put it away in your cellar on the assumption that it’s only going to get better, cost more, and be harder to acquire in the future. If so, you’ve made an astute purchase.

Only thing is, each of these three wines, when sampled from the barrel and tested one last time in the holding tank right before bottling, tasted terrific. Once they’re given a month or two to get over any bottle shock from bottling (and there’s always a little), they will already be truly drinkable. But they are also very young, and if a person could curb their appetite and put these wines up for 10 or 12 months they are going to be sensational.

And what that same person really should do is buy a mixed case now so they have four bottles of each wine. That way they could sample a bottle of each every three months and experience the alchemy of that year of aging. It really is a tremendous experience, one that every true wine lover should have at least once in his or her life. You will become like me, more confused, more amazed, and more appreciative of this “living” thing called wine.

Here’s what you will be in concert with:

Vino Tinto Rústico “Rustic Red Wine”

A vaquero, a gaucho and a buckaroo walk into a bar... what do they order? A bottle of Vino Tinto Rústico, of course! Evoking the cowboy heritage of three continents, this wine of the New West blends the powerful tannins and spicy dark fruit of three rustic reds—Malbec 39%, Primitivo 23%, and Tannat 9%—then softens them with the smokey, cherry-chocolate finish of Merlot 29%. This is a big, bold, complex wine that lives up to its name. Serve it with buffalo steaks, thick slabs of beef, lamb or wild game. Or sip it from an old tin cup in front of a blazing campfire along the banks of a wild river. You get the picture.

2022 Aerie Cabernet Sauvignon

This exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon is a proprietary blend of grapes from two tiny vineyards in Sonoma Valley, one grown near the summit on a steep mountain slope (hence the name) and one grown on the valley floor. The terroir of each of these vineyards is distinctly different from the other resulting in two amazing expressions of Cabernet Sauvignon, which when blended together produce a symphony of flavor with notes of red cherry, raspberries, vanilla and spice in a bold, complex body of lightly toasted oak and lush tannins. Serve it decanted with grilled meats, hearty stews, rich sauces, and other robust dishes—or with dark chocolate when your soul is in need.

2022 Requisite Red Wine

Red blends are the heritage of California wines, as many historic vineyards were planted with a multiple of grape varieties that were harvested together. I've been working on this proprietary blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon for over six years, and this vintage is unquestionably the best. My goal has always been to make a wine so delicious and drinkable I could count on it for any meal. This is a mid-body foodie wine, complex and structured enough for a special event, but not so heavy as to overwhelm what is being served. It is beautifully balanced with notes of strawberry, black cherry, dark chocolate and spice. The mouthfeel is unquestionably seductive with gentle tannins and soft acidity.

Once again, how to buy

Go to tinyvineyards.com and scroll down through the wines. You’ll find these three 2022 Vintage wines, and an option for a mixed case, half-case, or three bottle sample pack selection near the bottom.

You’ll also find our 2022 Sonoma Chardonnay, our 2023 Rosé of Zinfandel—both insanely yummy—and our 2021 Vintage reds including our Eclipse Malbec, which has suddenly become the rage all over the country as the perfect toasting wine and souvenir of the upcoming April 8th total solar eclipse.

Enjoy!