Here’s A Peek: Old Westminster Spring Updates
The kind of Spring you can feel is finally here! Sure, for most that means Mother’s Day, busting out the grill, and baseball. But for us, like every other season of the year, it means growing and bottling world-class wines. We’ve been working diligently all winter and now we’re ready for you to taste the results.
Here are 4 things we thought you’d like to know about this budding vintage:
1. The Vineyard
It all starts here. We’ve just finished pruning all 10,000 vines in our Home Vineyard. Each vine was meticulously cared for to ensure healthy growth in the season ahead. Now we eagerly await bud-break. Please hope along with us that we’ll dodge frost this spring! We’re not out from beneath this annual threat until Mother's Day.
2. The Winery
We’re putting finishing touches on our first Pét-Nat to be released this spring -- affectionately named Barbera Rosé. This wine is sure to change the game! Lisa is also preparing our still wines for the first round of bottling on April 17th. This year we're doing things a bit differently. These wines are made with as light of a human hand as possible: wild yeast fermentation and bottled without fining or filtration. We think the results will knock your socks off!
3. The Burnt Hill Project
We’re in discovery mode at our newly acquired Burnt Hill Farm. On April 12th we will be EM (electromagnetic) mapping. EM maps use the conductivity of soil to create subsurface maps. It’s like an x-ray. As you can imagine, it's impossible to peel an entire hillside back to study each layer of soil. Instead, we create color coded EM maps. Once we have our maps, we dig "truth pits" (6' deep holes) with a backhoe. These pits, in conjunction with our maps, give us a complete picture of what's beneath so that we can better know the soils on our hillside. This technology informs our decisions on what varieties of grapes to plant and where. There’s no room for guessing on a project of this magnitude.
4. The Tasting Room
Back at the Old Westminster tasting room, we are ramping up for the season. New wines are on the way and so is live music. And food trucks! On Cinco de Mayo from 5-10PM, we are hosting our inaugural "Food Truck Friday" featuring wood-fired pizza from our good friends from Well Crafted Pizza, live music from the ever-talented Mark Scott, and of course plenty of delicious wine! Pack up some lawn chairs and join us in the country for a relaxing, fun-filled evening.
We can’t wait to see you at Old Westminster Winery & Vineyard this year! Each year brings a new phase in our growth. As local farmers and artisans, we absolutely love to share the fruit of the land with you. Check out the Summer lineup Here.