deepak

  • January 18th, 2026

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    January 19th, 2026

    Dear Friends,

    Happy New Year.  Here at Nicholson Ranch, we were blessed with a wonderful 2025.  Thank you for your continued appreciation for the wine we craft for you. We are honored to be a part of your table and your celebrations. Cheers to a wonderful 2026!

    All the wine from 2025 is resting peacefully in barrels in our cellars, at the culmination of the journey that began in our vineyard. The grape growing season starts in March when the new buds emerge, followed by growth of verdant branches that bear flowers and fruit in June.  The heat of summer days and the cool fall nights create sweetness and flavor.  The idyllic seasonal journey picks up pace with harvest, as we pick the grapes off the vine and send them on a transformative journey from grapes to wine.

    The most delicate leg of the journey begins when natural yeast resident on the skins of the grapes and in the ambient air of the tank room begin transforming grape sugar and natural compounds to make alcohol and flavor and texture components.  The journey can be fraught with risk as bacteria compete with yeast to get to treasured sugar.  We protect the grapes from bacteria by keeping the fermentation vats chilled (like refrigerating food) and by blanketing grapes with carbon dioxide (like vacuum sealing).

    We taste and test the fermenting wine every day monitoring the gestating wine for infections. If bad bacteria get a big bite into our precious grapes, we would get cheesy, sour, and musty aromas in our wine.   By coddling and protecting grapes and yeast we guide the floral wine safely to its secure destination in barrels.  Second only to harvest, getting the wine into barrels is the most significant accomplishment for a winemaker.  We had much to celebrate at the end of 2025 as we successfully guided the wine to their new barrel home.

    Your wine shipment includes delicious wines from the 2022 and the 2020 vintage proudly representing their unique annual journey.

    Enjoy!


    Deepak Gulrajani

  • October 22nd, 2025

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    Dear Friends,

    Happy Thanksgiving.  We are excited to share your November Wine Club Relase, featuring three wonderful holiday wines –  The 2022 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir, the 2020 Cuvee Natalie Chardonnay and the 2019 Sonoma Valley Pinot Noir.  All are perfect companions for your holiday table.

    We also have a special announcement to make – a new member of our wine family has arrived..  Nancy and I, and the Nicholson Ranch family are proud to announce Priya Rosé.  Rosé has always been one of Nancy’s favorites and 2024 turned out to be the perfect year to make it. 

    Our new Pinot Noir vines, carefully nurtured over the past few years, yielded a small but beautiful crop in 2024. Bright and youthful, the harvest offered flavorful grapes that inspired this vibrant and refreshingly dry Rosé. Notes of ruby red grapefruit and dried strawberries, accented by a subtle herbaceous hint, make this wine a welcome addition to your holiday celebrations.

    I named our Rosé, Priya, meaining “beloved” in Hindi, in honor of my wife, the inspiration (and instigator) behind this wine.

    We are delighted to offer the inaugural Rosé as a three-bottle addition to your wine club package. This exclusive offer, available only to our wine club members through this email, allows you to add these bottles to your club shipment at a special price of $120 with no additional shipping cost.  To add this to your shipment please click  ADD ROSE THREE-PACK and send us your name in the reply.

    In other exciting news, the 2025 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes harvests are complete!  Cuvee Natalie Chardonnay was the first pick of the season, grown on a steep south-west facing hillside that gives it such distinctive character.  Pinot Noir from the young vines –  including the block planted by club members – came soon after.  Our mature reserve Pinot vines were harvested just before the early autumn rains.  

    The 2025 wines are now resting in barrel and promise to be another exceptional Nicholson Ranch vintage.

    We have much to be thankful for this year, and we’re especially grateful for you — our wine club members.  Your continued support and passion for our wines inspire us every day.  Thank you for being part of our family.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

    Deepak

  • August 23rd, 2025

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    Dear Friends,

    Summer is winding down, with the sun rising later and setting earlier.  Our summer weather in Sonoma has arrived late, with the first days of 90-degree weather now in August.  June and July were an extension of Spring, with highs in the 70s and low 80s.  How does this impact this year’s grapes?  For sure, it will push back the first day of harvest to late September or early October, about two to four weeks later than usual, extending the time the grapes are on the vines.  From a winemaker’s perspective, the extended hang-time is a good thing.  Sunlight and UV radiation trigger the formation of many of the compounds that result in flavor and tannins. More days of sunlight result in darker berries with more flavor compounds and more tannins.  The result is a more complex wine with a rounder mouthfeel, and a richer, more intense flavor profile.

    From a farmer’s perspective, the longer time in the vineyard carries more risk.  As we get into October, the chance of rain increases.  Usually in October, the rain is a small sprinkle that does not do any harm.  Occasionally, it may rain more heavily and precipitate an inch or more.  Rain on ripe grapes promotes the formation of mold.  Moldy grapes do not make good wine.  The last time this happened was in 2015 – we discarded all the moldy fruit first before going back to harvest pristine grapes the next day. This incident was a stark reminder of the unpredictable nature of winemaking, but it also showed us the resilience of our team and the quality of our grapes.  The resulting wine turned out great, but we had far less wine.

    Here is hoping we continue to have the sun in our face and the wind on our backs for the rest of the year.

    Summer is also the culmination of the winemaking cycle when we finally get our wine into bottles.  We successfully bottled our 2023 vintage Pinot Noirs and the 2022 NIRVANA and Syrah in early August.  Bottling is the most stressful time for any winemaker because there invariably is some problem.  While all our wine is grown here and aged here at Nicholson Ranch under our constant eyes (and nose), the bottles, corks, labels, and capsules all come from many sources from several countries.  Bottles are from Mexico or France, Corks from Portugal, labels (the paper) from Canada, and capsules from France or Spain.  All the distance leads to many a slip.  We order months in advance, anticipating logistical challenges.  We measure not just twice but three times.  Finally, the bottling day arrives when it all comes together – the wine flows from barrel to tanks to a modern assembly line of machines that fill each bottle perfectly, cork it, apply the capsule, and stick the label.  After a hopeful start, despite a few start-up hiccups, the line flows smoothly, and we package great wine into nice new, shiny bottles.

    Your current wine club release has several great wines in nice bottles from the 2019 to 2022 vintages. We deeply appreciate your continued support and thank you for being a Nicholson Ranch club member.

    Cheers

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • March 26th, 2025

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    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to Spring.  The hills are green and the wildflowers are blooming, benefitting from a winter of good rainfall.  Spring is special, with yellow, blue, and orange wildflowers heralding renewal of this vintage.  The grapevines are awakened by the warm spring days, with new shoots emerging from their winter hibernation.  The first shoots that sprout are on the eastern part of our vineyard, appropriately named Spring Hill.

    Spring Hill has Chardonnay grapes and the new release showcases the 2020 Spring Hill Chardonnay and the 2020 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay.  The NIRVANA 2021 is the premier Pinot in your package.  For our members who receive only Pinots the package includes the 2020 and 2021 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir; for members who receive our reds a 2018 Merlot is in your shipment.

    We tasted these wines and have detailed notes to share with you below.  The common threads that run through are aroma, flavor, texture, and balance, woven together to create wines that leave a memorable impression on your palate.  Each of the components is a result of choices we make in the vineyard, during fermentation and in the cellar.  Aroma and flavor are greatly influenced by the terroir – the weather and soil at Nicholson Ranch – and fine-tuned by the date we harvest the grapes off the vine.  Texture and balance are created by patient aging in oak barrels.  What type of oak and how long the wine ages in the barrel determines how all the components are woven together.

    All Nicholson Ranch wines are aged in French oak barrels for two years or three years.  French oak trees used for barrels grow in specific forests in the center and east of France.  The forests are owned by the government and historically the oak was used to build ships because of their water-tight quality.  Today independent saw mills purchase whole logs that are cut into smaller staves.  Coopers purchase staves from sawmills – each cooper sourcing the wood from a selection of forests, selecting the staves for the quality of the grain.  The cooper ages the wood for two to three years to make the wood denser and water-tight.  The barrels are crafted from staves held together with metal hoops. The signature element of each cooper is how they toast the barrels – how hot is the toasting fire and for how long each barrel is toasted.  The forest, the grain, the toasting, all hand selected and crafted by the cooper, gives each barrel a distinctive quality.

    The Spring Hill and the Sonoma Coast Chardonnay are fermented in a selection of French oak barrels and then aged for two years.  The full-bodied creamy texture of the Chardonnays are a direct result of barrel fermentation and aging.

    Barrel selection and aging distinguishes NIRVANA.  NIRVANA is aged for three years in French oak barrels a year more than Cactus Hill.  The extra year in the barrel makes NIRVANA concentrated and full-bodied, creating a distinctive wine.

    Enjoy the wines in your wine club package.  Thank you for being a Nicholson Ranch wine club member.

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • January 22nd, 2025

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    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

  • October 23rd, 2024

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    A picture is worth a thousand words. The images above are the high point of Harvest 2024. That is me with Pinot Noir grapes from the new Wine Club block. On the right is the Rosé we make from the latest Pinot Noir. On the left is the harvest of the Natalie Chardonnay vineyard.

    As you know, we have been working on replanting for a few years. The summary version – in 2022 we asked a local nursery to grow the baby vines in a greenhouse before planting them (with wine club members’ help) in the Nicholson Ranch vineyard in April 2023. This year, their third year, the young vines bore a small number of grapes. Grapes from young vines are generally more fruit-forward and have a softer texture – perfect for making a Pinot Noir rose. I am thrilled to taste the new vineyard’s grapes and wines. I look forward to sharing these with you next year.

    The new vines were harvested in the first half of September. The grapes on mature vines take a little longer to ripen—these grapes that make the reserve Pinot Noirs were harvested by the first week in October. The weather in September and October was challenging, fluctuating from a few days of heat with highs in the mid-90s to 100s to a few days moderating to the 70s and 80s. The hot days ripen the grapes faster and require quick decisions on harvesting.

    The Nicholson Ranch vineyard is divided into many blocks. Its slope and type of soil define each block. Are the vines on top of the hill, or a slope, or on the valley floor? Is the soil clay, volcanic, or sandy? Each combination of slope and soil will produce distinct flavor grapes. Each block ripens at a different time, some taking a week or two longer to attain the best flavors. When I taste the grapes, I am sensitive to each block individually. The hot days required me to use all my experience in the vineyard to harvest each block when each had the best flavor.

    Each block is then fermented and aged separately. After two years of aging, the differences between the wines for each block are more pronounced. The different blocks make a wonderful selection of Nicholson Ranch wines, each different from the other but distinctly Nicholson Ranch.

    This upcoming wine club release features the 2021 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir and the 2019 Cuvee Natalie Chardonnay, each from its own unique block. These wines, with their distinct flavors and characteristics, truly embody the magic of the Nicholson Ranch vineyard. I can’t wait for you to experience them.

    Happy Thanksgiving

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • August 21st, 2024

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    Dear Friends,

    We hope you had a great Summer and continue to enjoy the next few weeks of wonderful weather. August in Sonoma is very pleasant with highs in the 80s and lows in the 50s, great weather for the grapes to ripen. June and especially July were significantly warmer than last year, with July likely having some of the warmest weather I have seen in a long time. At this stage, the grapes are dark green and tough and able to handle the heat. The grapes started ripening in late July and over time will start softening up and develop sweet flavors. The cooler August has come at the right time for optimal ripening.

    As some of you have noticed I write more often about the weather as we get closer to harvest. The weather from now to September greatly influences the color, flavor, and texture of the wine. Either my son Zander or I go through the vineyard regularly to assess the progress of the vines. Soon we will sample the grapes and taste the juice. The sampling is methodical, going through each row in order, picking a grape from every tenth vine, some from the top of the cluster, some from the middle and some from the bottom. Zander collects the grapes and brings them to the winery. We press the juice and let it soak for an hour before tasting it in a wine glass. We assess the juice with the same acute attention as we would a fine wine. We look at the color, the aroma and taste. Does the Pinot Noir juice have the right shade of red, do the aromas evoke flowers, red berries and is it reminiscent of freshly brewed black tea. For Nicholson Ranch Pinot, tea is a key aroma to assess the ripeness. When we sip the juice does it have balance between the sweetness and acidity. All these sensory facets translate to the final wine, so getting it right for harvest is essential.

    On a parallel track I pay close attention to the short-term weather forecast. Cooler weather in the 70s will allow us to wait a few days before harvest. A sudden heat spike in the 90s or an unseasonal rainstorm will need a quicker decision. The harvest decision is the most significant decision a winemaker can make. In a vintage where we are blessed with cooler weather a winemaker has more leeway. When conditions are less than perfect the winemaker’s decision will make the difference from good to great.

    The 2021 Cactus Hill is the first wine from the 2021 vintage. The weather in 2021 had all the drama of a tougher vintage with a hot spell in early September followed by two, fortunately, small rainstorms. 2021 may have had some drama but this story has a Hollywood ending – a Cactus Hill that is as good if not better than any prior vintage we have produced.

    Before I end this note, I have a small ask – please refer the Nicholson Ranch wine club to friends and family. As a thank-you, for each new member you sign up you receive a $200 credit that you can use to pay for a wine club shipment or for purchasing additional wine. New members can sign up online on our website www.nicholsonranch.com. Just send us an email with the name of the new member and how you would like to use your credit. If you sign up more than one member, you receive additional $200 credits for each member you refer. A gift that keeps on giving.

    Cheers

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • March 27th, 2024

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    Dear Friends,

    Spring is here!  After an interminable number of rainy days, we finally have had a week (or more) of sunshine daily.  We surely need the rain in California, and I am very grateful to get a typical wet season.  But I miss the sunshine, and it could not have come at a better time.  The rain is excellent; it soaks into the soil, sustaining the thirsty vines throughout the year.  Sunshine in March, following the wet winter, is ideal, just as the young vines are waking up from their winter dormancy.  All in all, a great start to 2024.

    Spring is also when we focus on bottling the wines from earlier vintages.  This year, we will be bottling many Pinot Noirs from 2022 and NIRVANA from 2021.  All the big reds to be bottled, Nicholson Ranch Merlot and Syrah, and Gulrajani Super-Tuscans and Cabernets are from 2021.  Two parallel tracks are essential for bottling.  The first is what is in the bottle, the wine itself, which is both a sensory and an immersive experience.  The second, much more mundane and prosaic, is the glass bottle and the packaging.

    Let us get to the wine.  I taste every barrel to ensure the quality of each barrel and to select barrels to reserve for NIRVANA.  Tasting wine from barrels is one of the favorite parts of my role as a winemaker.  Besides the wine tasting great, the work completely absorbs my attention, letting me forget about all other concerns.  Going from barrel to barrel, I am so grateful for what each barrel does to the wine.  The barrel, as you know, adds aroma and flavor and, more subtly, adds texture and body.  A wine not aged in a barrel can have great fruit and floral aromas.  A wine flavored with oak (essence, powder, or oak chips) will show vanilla, toast, and spice. However, only true barrel aging will transform the texture and integrate the fruit and oak flavors to create a sensory experience of smell, taste, and texture, from the bouquet to the mouthfeel to the finish.  Only patient barrel aging can make a great wine that will go beyond the sensory experience and spark emotions of joy, contentment, and nostalgia.

    Now for the nuts and bolts of getting the wine into bottles and planning the bottling.  After ordering the bottles, foils, labels, and corks, I ensure the bottling truck has been reserved and confirmed well in advance. I measure and check order quantities not just twice but three times.  Fortunately, the agony and stress of supply-chain problems are mostly behind us.  Getting ready for bottling is stressful enough. Better planning leads to bottling the wine without heat and oxygen exposure, which would diminish the quality.  I aim to open a freshly bottled wine and feel the same emotions of joy and contentment that I get tasting the wine from barrels.  

    This wine release includes the 2020 NIRVANA, a wine aged for three years in French oak barrels, and sure to evoke strong emotions with the first whiff of its aromas.  A detailed description is below.  

    Cheers,

    Deepak Gulrajani
    Winemaker / Owner
    Nicholson Ranch

  • September 2022

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    Dear Friends,

    We are approaching another harvest, and it fills me with excitement and anxiety. Witnessing the joy of harvest and being an active participant in the annual cycle of the grapevine is exciting. Knowing the plants are completing their year’s work in producing magnificent fruit is incredible. Yet, I must balance my excitement with the vigilance of monitoring the weather. Currently, and for the next two weeks, we are having perfect summer weather- 85 degrees in the day and 55 at night. As we go into the fall, the daytime temperature usually cools down to 75 degrees and allows the fruit to ripen at a slow pace. This extended season allows the grapes to develop complex flavors. However, my concern is about heat and rain.

    In the past ten years, we have seen unexpected heat in the fall or sometimes even rain. Heat spikes take temperatures into the 90s and sometimes 100s, shorten the season, forcing us to harvest grapes before their prime. These spikes are rarely catastrophic since they affect only one section of the vineyard. Our vineyard has several grape varieties and several clones within each type that give a diversity of ripening times. Chardonnay will ripen first, followed by Pinot Noir and then the big reds. Amongst the Pinot clones, Cactus Hill ripens first, followed by Dry Farmed and 777. A heat spike event is most consequential to the block nearest the ripeness peak.

    Rain, on the other hand, can be disastrous. As the fruit ripens, the skins become softer and less resilient. Rain and humidity promote fungi that begin to rot the fruit. Rain in California arrives in late October after all the grapes are picked. Every other year, it rains unexpectedly in September or early October while grapes are still on the vine. A small amount of rain, less than a half inch, may not do much damage. But a more extensive rainfall will leave water on the leaves and the fruit—perfect conditions for mold to develop and destroy the crop.

    In each case, heat or rain, understanding the individual block of the vineyard and the level of resilience within the section is crucial in making thoughtful decisions. Having farmed Nicholson Ranch for over 25 years has allowed me to navigate the vagaries of each year and course correct appropriately. To this point, most of you will receive the 2019 Cactus Hill Pinot Noir. The 2019 vintage had two three-day heat events in September and a few days of a light drizzle. Despite, the uneven weather, the 2019 Cactus Hill has gone on to win the Best of Class award at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, the largest competition for American wines.

    As we approach harvest, here’s hoping that it is filled with calm weather and is easy and smooth.

    Cheers,

    Deepak Gulrajani