2025

  • 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