• January 20th, 2021

    Dear Friends,

    Happy New Year! We are enjoying a good start at Nicholson Ranch, even with Covid.  After a year of a severe drought, California received abundant rain delivered by a cascade of storms dubbed “atmospheric rivers” for their serpentine appearance on a radar map.  The immense rainfall turned our wine-country hills bright green by Halloween and the Sierra Nevada mountains white by Christmas.  After two years of being a mud-hole, our pond is full to the brim, the surface shining like a silver mirror.  The winter sun, flying low, makes the moisture sparkle on the green hills.  Sunset bathes the landscape in an orange hue.  At the moment, it is perfect.

    Despite the tribulations of Covid, last year was one of the best years for me.  As of the end of 2021, my three older kids are all venturing out into their adult lives.  Zander, my eldest, is literally off the payroll.  After three years of working in our lab and hosting our guests, Zander decided to pursue further and deeper in the lab sciences area.  Taylor, my second son, has his first real job as an engineering consultant in the Bay Area; and, Natalie, my only daughter, was accepted by UCSF, one of the best medical schools anywhere.  I am a proud father and I feel very content having the kids move out into the world.

    The New Year has also got me breaking out to experience life beyond wine country.  Early this month my wife, Nancy, and I were in Houston for a family wedding.  It was good to travel and see friends and family after two years.  It was exhilarating to celebrate with music, color and delicious food. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated.  As 2022 is my 60th year, I plan to celebrate my milestone year by spending time with friends and family, visiting India in the spring and Europe in the summer.   

    I look forward to seeing you, my wine club family and friends in 2022.  Come out and visit Wine Country.

    In the meantime, we have wonderful Nicholson Ranch estate wines for you from the 2018 and 2019 vintages.  The California sun, our volcanic soil, and the craft of my winemaking team allows us to share our little corner of Sonoma with you.  

    Cheers.

    C:\Documents and Settings\deepakg\Desktop\Sig-DG.png

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • January 16th, 2022

    Happy New Year! I hope your holidays brought joyful times, health, and new memories with family and friends. The New Year at Nicholson Ranch started wet with a lot of rain and more forecast in the coming days.  This is a good thing for us, and for the vineyards, as the soil soaks up the rain and stores the water for springtime growth.  The waterfall you see from our tasting room is continuously flowing, filling up the pond below, inviting life. We spotted the first waterfowl to return, a cormorant and a pair of ducks (likely migrating bufflehead). The grass shooting up on the surrounding hills is slowly turning green. When we get more sunshine the hills and the vineyards will be robed in a swathe of verdant green.

    All the wine from 2022 is now in barrels in our underground cellars.  The grapes picked in September fermented in small tanks in the winery.  The first fermentation is when yeast convert the grape sugars to alcohol and other compounds that impart flavors and aromas. This fermentation takes about three weeks.  The wine then goes through the second, slower fermentation called malolactic fermentation (ML for short) that converts the malic acid in grapes to a softer, creamier lactic acid.  The fermentation can take two months (or sometimes longer).  ML just finished for the very last barrel of 2022.  All red wines (with rare exceptions) go through the second ML fermentation. Not only does ML improve the texture of the wine, but it also makes the wine age-worthy.  Without ML, the wine would be excessively tart and texturally rough.

    In addition, ML converts the malic acid which is a food source for some microbes into a more stable lactic acid.  As a result, we can store and age the wine in barrels for a long time without fear of spoilage.  For a winemaker, this is a very satisfying moment, when we guide the wine to being not just a tasty beverage, but one that will provide immense pleasure years after it was made.  Recently, I heard from members who are still enjoying older Nicholson Ranch Pinot Noirs from the 2011 and 2013 vintages. Curious about other vintages we opened bottles of 2008 and 2010 Pinots. Both wines showed beautiful aromas and flavors, belying their age.  For me, these older bottles are like photo albums with memories encapsulated from their vintage year.

    This wine club release includes wines from 2017 that are just approaching their prime, as well as a 2019 “777” Pinot Noir. We hope these wines bring back joyful memories from their vintage years.

    C:\Documents and Settings\deepakg\Desktop\Sig-DG.png

    Cheers!

  • October 12th, 2021

    Dear Friends,

    We are in the last week of Harvest 2021.  It has been an extended and relaxed harvest season.  After the heat of late summer, fall brought cooler weather with highs in the 70s and 80s and lows as low as the 40s.  A harvest day starts before dawn as the grapes are cold, refrigerated by nature.  Picking grapes cold preserves the natural flavors and keeps harmful bacteria at bay.  Harvesting our grapes by hand is the gentlest way to pick fruit and protect all the flavors.  Bruised fruit does not make good wine.

    I am in the vineyard each day we harvest, keeping a sharp eye on each bunch picked.  If a bunch is less ripe, or sometimes too ripe, it gets tossed.  There is no time for “to be or not to be”.  If a grape cluster does not look good it gets discarded.  In between the grape-tossing I get to enjoy and delight in the beauty of dawn.  Somedays the moon is full and about to set as the sun slowly glows from the other side.  Somedays, the stars are bright, with Sirius piercing the night-sky.  The air, weighed down by night’s humidity, allows moisture to condense on the grape berries making them glisten under the pickers head-lamps.  There is no better place to be.

    This year’s moderate heat was the perfect harvest weather.  It allows grapes to take longer to ripen and spend more days hanging on the vine.  The longer “hang-time” gives the grapes more time in the sunshine.  And, sunshine is the magic ingredient to develop flavor and texture.  Flavors of pear, apple and peach in Chardonnay; tea, roses and berries in Pinot Noir develop with extra time basking outdoors.  Tannins that create body, texture and mouthfeel also benefit from added sunshine.  Besides making the wine taste good the chemical compounds, called phenols, that make up flavor and tannins are also good for you.  Grape phenols are antioxidants and anti-inflammatory and have other health improving properties.  So, take it from Dr. Deepak and enjoy a glass or two of Nicholson Ranch every day.  Cheers to your health.

    Thank you all for your good wishes and support in 2021.  I am blessed and I am grateful.

    C:\Documents and Settings\deepakg\Desktop\Sig-DG.png

    Happy Thanksgiving

    Deepak Gulrajani

  • November 5th, 2022

    Dear Friends,

    We had a good, albeit early and stressful, harvest this year.  In my previous letter, I mentioned that heat and rain are the two weather challenges we face at harvest time.  This year we experienced both. In early September, we had a few days of 100+ degree highs. In anticipation of the heat, we harvested some vineyard blocks before the temperature rose, testing the grapes every couple of days to check the flavors.  The grapes in some blocks were not ready, so we let them stay on the vine.  Unfortunately, the hot spell ripened the grapes and dried them more than I’d liked. However, when the rain arrived a week later, it rehydrated the grapes, returning them to their average size.  It rained about an inch, with the downside being that the fruit became wet and potentially could become moldy.  As a result, we worked with a double crew to pick the remainder of our grapes at Nicholson Ranch before it warmed up and grew any mold.  The rain and heat essentially helped cancel each out.

    Harvest days start at 5 am, just before dawn, when temperatures are in the low 50s. Picking the grapes when they are cold preserves flavor and aroma.  A harvest crew includes a tractor driver, eight pickers, and two leafers.  The pickers begin the morning working with headlamps, expertly cutting off each cluster of grapes from the vine with a small sickle-bladed knife.  Quickly, working with nimble fingers, they fill up picking buckets, each holding 40 to 50 lbs of grapes.  They load the grapes into larger bins on a trailer pulled by the tractor.  The leafer’s job (my designated role) is to throw out leaves and any unsound fruit.  Grapes that are not ripe or grapes that are moldy do not remain. The tractor takes the full bins to the winery and returns with empty containers to repeat the process. The crew and the tractor go through the block, vine by vine, row upon row, until we have picked the entire block.  Usually, we end at 11 am before it has begun to warm up and just in time for a hearty lunch. 

    At the winery, the grape clusters require further care. They are put through a destemmer, a machine with rotating paddles separating the berries from the stems.  The berries are collected in our fermentation tanks.  A typical tank is rectangular, 5 ft x 7 ft, and can hold an acre’s worth of grapes.  Our entire morning pick of 6 hours can yield just two tanks full of berries.  The tanks are refrigerated to keep the fruit cold to allow the grape juice to absorb color and texture from the grape skins.  After a few days, we turn off the refrigeration and let the grapes warm up.  This step allows the native yeast to start fermenting the juice.  We do not add any yeast to the juice but allow native yeast that resides on the skins of the grapes to do the fermentation. Our native yeasts produce distinctive aromas and textures unique to Nicholson Ranch wines.

    Fermentation takes between two and three weeks.  Once the yeast has converted all the sugar in the juice to alcohol and other aroma compounds, the fermentation stops, and we now have a young wine.  The newly fermented wine goes into the French oak barrels stored in our underground cellars.  The wine will age for at least two years before it is ready to be bottled.  The barrel aging enhances and concentrates flavors and smooths out the texture of the young wine.  Another year of aging in the bottle adds to the complexity of the wine.  

    Most of you will receive the 2019 Dry Farmed Pinot Noir that recently was awarded 93 points from the Wine Enthusiast magazine.  The Dry Farmed and all the Nicholson ranch wines are beneficiaries of our sun, soil and the hands that grow and make the wine (let’s not forget the invisible natural yeast who are essential to making wine).

    C:\Documents and Settings\deepakg\Desktop\Sig-DG.png

    Happy Thanksgiving,

  • July 21st, 2021

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the much-awaited Summer of 2021. We have turned the page on Covid, and there are almost no restrictions on our guests or us.  It is good to see friends and family after the long Covid isolation.  We are so excited and grateful to host club members, many of you, making your first trip to Nicholson Ranch in two years.  It is lovely, once again, to engage with you without heightened concern on social distancing.  Bring on the hugs and the handshakes.  We have missed you.

    This Summer brings its unique character. We see the effects of the extreme heat and drought in the West.  The few of us, close to the California Coast, have the fog to shield us from the intense heat domes that have settled for days in the West.  The coastal fog and the ocean breeze have been singularly consistent, rolling in every evening and lowering our nighttime temperatures to 55 degrees.   The nighttime cooling may be the essential factor in allowing us to grow fabulous Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  The cooling slows down the ripening of the grapes and allows the grapes to retain their acidity.  A slow growth gives the grapes more time to spend basking in the sunshine, adding layers of flavor with each extra day.  The right amount of acidity in the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes showcases the flavor to maximum effect.

    The 2018 Cactus Hill Pinot Noir and the 2018 Sonoma Valley Chardonnay are delicate wines magically crafted by the sun and fog to display their complex aromas and flavors.  The third wine in the release is the 2015 Nicholson Ranch Napa Valley Cabernet.  This wine, blended from barrels I have acquired in my long quest to find a Napa vineyard, does not disappoint the nose or the palate.

    Last November, I found the perfect vineyard in Yountville with seven acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese planted on the western hillsides of Napa.  Now, nine months later, I am launching the Gulrajani Family Estate.  The Gulrajani vineyard features three wines – a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Super-Tuscan blend of Cabernet and Sangiovese named Narasimha, and a Sangiovese-focused wine called Sanjaya. The initial release is less than 100 cases of each wine.  We hope to increase the production to 300 cases each.  All wines will be sold exclusively to the wine club.  We encourage you to learn more about the new estate and these fabulous wines by going to the website www.gulrajaniestate.com.  While you are there, I invite you to join the Gulrajani wine club.

    Thank you for being Nicholson Ranch club members.  I look forward to your visit, in the meantime, e-hugs, and e-handshakes.

    C:\Documents and Settings\deepakg\Desktop\Sig-DG.png

    Cheers!

    Deepak Gulrajani