Where do wineries get their grapes?
Nalle is estate grown and bottled, meaning we grow our own grapes and bottle at the winery. It might be hard to tell the difference when you see wines on the store shelf, but a lot of wines are outsourced fruit or pre-made juice that is bottled at some unknown facility before a label is just slapped on it. The fruit could be coming from all over California and just blended.
Nalle is a true taste of place. It is grapes from our 97-year-old estate vineyard, produced by our very own hands at the winery that sits on the vineyard, and bottled here too. However, because bottling requires an ultra-sterile environment, we use a mobile bottling line onsite to ensure quality. A lot of wineries do the same thing. Once we bottle, the wines must settle down and are left to rest for 6 months or so.
Our wine club is unique in the sense that the club shipments consist of our new release wines. So, our wines are bottled, rest, and then are released to the club. This ensures that the club gets the latest vintage as most everything sells out to the club. Click here to learn more about the Nalle club memberships. And because our wines are meant to age, we live by the rule of 3s: decant to drink one now, age one, and share the other with a friend. Bottle shape is a whole other discussion. There are burgundy style bottles, Bordeaux style, different colors, etc. Some of it is tradition based, some is for aging and some is stylistic. For example, we bottle our Pinot Noir in Burgundy style bottle. We also like glass that is tinted a darker color to protect from sunshine getting in and damaging the wine. I’m sure my husband could go on and on about why we choose the glass we do, bit this is my simple explanation.
