After a healthy winter with plenty of snow, spring arrived quickly as an extended warm period in April brought excitement and anxiety. The vines awoke just a bit earlier than normal but expertly dodged the frost. A cool, wet, and cloudy pattern settled in after budbreak, slowing early season growth and increasing disease pressure, making prudent shoot thinning especially important. The vines hurriedly caught up when June and July brought sun, rain, and heat. The rain disappeared in August, just as the fruit began to ripen, and we fell steadily into the most extreme drought in Vermont’s recorded history – bad news for our neighbors and our yields, but good news for wine quality. Ripening slowed, preserving acidity and aromatics, concentrating flavor, and allowing us to pick exactly when we wanted. The 2025 vintage will be remembered for its exceptional drought and for its wines of complexity, depth, and beauty.

Planted in 2004 on 8’ x 13’ spacing and trained on Geneva Double Curtain, these are big vines with plenty of room to grow. And with the silty clays so typical of the Champlain Valley providing plenty of water and nutrients, oh boy, do they grow.

Block: Lower Vineyard La Crescent

Soil: Silty clay

Vine Establishment: 2004

Training System: Geneva Double Curtain

Farming Practices: Regenerative

Harvest: Handpicked into small lugs to avoid crushing

Fermentation: 100% stainless. The fruit we picked on the first day was destemmed and held on its skins in the winery before being drained and pressed about 24 hours later. This juice was combined with the second day’s harvest, which was immediately pressed whole cluster. Fermented cold and slow, and arrested by chilling when we liked the balance.

Aging: 6 months in stainless

Harvest Date(s): Oct 2, Oct 3

Composition: 100% La Crescent

Alcohol: 13.6%

pH: 3.12

Titratable Acidity: 9.7 g/L

Residual Sugar: 9.0 g/L

Cases Produced: 106