Dear Friends,
Happy New Year. I hope you had a joyful holiday season with your family and friends. It is a wonderful time here at the winery and at my home. We had grand celebrations with my family – all my kids, sister, and her husband were there for Christmas dinner. I prepared roast duck (or ducks, I should say – my kids can eat a lot) with a bourbon cherry sauce. I paired the meal with Cactus Hill Pinot Noir and the Gulrajani Sanjaya, primarily made of Sangiovese. I feel grateful to connect regularly with my family over holidays and meals. Our wine accompanies our dinner and conversations, a universal tradition strengthening our family ties.
The end of the year and the start of the new one is also a time to close out the previous vintage and get ready for the new one. The harvest season in 2024 ended with a heat wave in early October. As the grapes get close to perfect, they also get fragile. Excess heat can turn them into raisins very quickly. As a winemaker you are faced with a tough choice – you can pick early, but you will have less flavor, or you can risk the heat to get better flavor but lose some grapes. For me flavor is everything – so it was an easy choice. The 2024 wines from Nicholson Ranch are among the most exceptional I have seen in five years. The 2024 vintage is undoubtedly a winemaker’s year – the harvest decision each winemaker made will matter immensely for the quality of the final wine.
All the wine from 2024 is now safely in barrels in our cellars. Over the next few years, it will rest and evolve from a fruity young wine to an aromatic, luxurious, and sensuous wine.
In the vineyard, we are eagerly preparing for 2025. The winter rains have been generous, providing our soil with a full reserve of water for the entire year. Soon, we will start pruning the vines to structure them for the new vintage. This process requires individual attention to each vine, selecting and retaining two to four branches while cutting off the rest. Each branch has six to ten buds spaced three inches apart along the length of the branch. In the spring, the buds will open, revealing young shoots that will grow through the year and bear fruit. This marks the beginning of the new vintage and the rhythm and anticipation of what nature will bring.
I am thrilled to share the wines from our 2018, 2019 and 2021 vintages with you in your wine club package. I hope they bring you as much joy as they have brought us in crafting them.
Thank you, dear friends, for your unwavering support. Your encouragement and love for our wines mean the world to us. Cheers to you and to the wonderful year ahead!
Cheers!
Deepak Gulrajani