• Email
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

The Storm Cellar

  • Our Wines
  • Our Story
  • Shop
  • Find Us
  • Wine Clubs
  • Events
  • The Vineyard
  • Press
  • Journal

Springtime Pruning Begins at the Redstone Vineyard

Springtime· Vineyard Life· Winemaking

12 Apr

Kicking Off the 2020 Vintage

How have you been doing lately? How are you adapting to this new (temporary) normal?

It’s been a hectic few weeks for us. We have had to shift our business model from predominately selling our wines to restaurants, which are now closed or slowed down to only offering takeout sales, to selling our wines online. While many people have also slowed down or have had to quarantine themselves, we’ve entered into our busiest season – pruning and bottling season.

We kicked off the pruning season by getting after our Riesling vines on April 4th, and we are nearly halfway finished with all seven acres. It’s a nonstop, daily process from now through May. We are pruning down to four buds on each vine spur, eventually pruning down to two buds. Those two buds will soon burst and become the shoots that produce the grape clusters for our 2020 wine.

You can see the four buds we’ve pruned down to in the first photo below. That pale, ecru-toned, vertical shoot is called a spur, and we are only keeping the strongest of spurs, ones that are pencil-thick. When the spurs are stronger, the resulting shoots are stronger, the clusters are healthier, and the wine is a better quality.

Great wine truly starts with intentional farming.

The Pruning Process

Why don’t we just prune down to two buds now?

While it seems like we are creating more work for ourselves, since we will have to go back through and prune down to two buds in a few weeks, we are actually preventing our vines from becoming damaged from any future frost events. The buds farthest away from the older wood of the cordon will emerge first. It is the vine’s way of preserving its strongest buds from a frost event. If we receive a blast of cold weather, the not-yet-emerged buds will be protected. We’ll then go back through, cutting back to two buds, once the threat of spring frost is behind us.

Many people do not enjoy the task of pruning. The four of us actually LOVE the process of setting up the vines for the season. It’s almost like a “spring reset” for the season. It’s a one-plant-at-a-time, painstakingly slow process, and it can wreak havoc on your hands, if you don’t take the time to stretch them out along the way. We tend to break every 30 or so vines to stretch our hands, sharpen our pruners, and look up at the sky to realign our postures.

When we walk up to a vine, we’re greeted with last year’s growth. It can look quite intimidating, but we take it one step at a time, starting by removing any weak or damaged portions of the plant. We then make sure the vine is supported and growing vertically. Vines naturally and prolifically act like weeds and will grow in all directions like a blackberry bush. Our job is to coax it into a position that gives the new shoots proper exposure to sunlight and also sets up the vines for better chances of survival during the dormant winter season. We’re also pruning down to the correct amount of buds we’d like to keep and making sure each vine is snugly secured to the fruiting wire.

We’re also collecting all of the old vine wood, so that we can turn it into mulch. We will then use that vine wood mulch to mound up our newly planted vines in the fall, in order to protect their tender, frost-sensitive graft lines. We will take any chance we can get to utilize “waste” and turn it into something useful.

Our team of four is able to work apart from each other, so that we are adhering to social distancing guidelines. We do our best to work as a team by staying in the same zones and listening to music together. Our morale is high, and we are encouraged to keep a steady pace, with our goal of finishing the pruning of all 15 acres before the end of May.

Creativity From Chaos

It is interesting to note that in our last blog post, we mentioned, “Sometimes a temporary disappointment can provide a moment for a creative and daring spark.” We were referring to how we rallied to purchase a relatively unknown grape to make rosé this past year, since two of our Pinot Noir accounts weren’t able to sell us their grapes. It is interesting that we can apply that very same quote to our current moment.

Because the coronavirus has limited and challenged our sales model, we have had to quickly pivot to being an online wine salesroom. We rallied to create a virtual wine-tasting series on Instagram Live, and we crafted “Quarantine Tasting Packs“, filled with wines that coordinated with that tasting series. We even teamed up with a few of our favorite food bloggers and writers to pair their recipes with those wines, and we also teamed up with a local company, The Spice Guy, to offer unique spice blends to use in those recipes.

The response has been incredible!

We are doing our best to keep the mood positive and our business growing, despite the limitations imposed upon us. We also teamed up with Kori Stanton, aka DJ Koko Love, of KVNF radio. She has created playlists for each of our wines in the tasting series and published the first paired playlist this past week, bringing our 2018 Dry Riesling to audible life!

You can listen to “Sassy Beats” on both iTunes and Spotify. We’ll be updating our website, as she publishes each playlist, but you can also follow Kori on these two platforms, so you’ll be the first to hear anything she shares. Visit DJ Koko Love’s profiles:

  • DJ Koko Love on iTunes
  • DJ Koko Love on Spotify

We are so grateful for the widespread support these past few weeks! We are overjoyed to pack up our Quarantine Tasting Packs and send them out across the country to friends, family members, colleagues, and plenty of new faces. We are also happy that the weather has been favorable to let us make serious headway in the vineyard.

Happy spring and happy Easter to you!

Much love,

Jayme and Steve

Leave a Comment

SUBSCRIBE TO STAY UP TO DATE!

Sign up today to receive first dibs on new wine vintages, vineyard events, new vintage playlists, and more!

« The 2019 Vintage at The Storm Cellar | Scenes from the Riesling Harvest

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We are Steve Steese and Jayme Henderson, the dynamic duo behind The Storm Cellar, and this is our story.

SUBSCRIBE TO STAY UP TO DATE!

Sign up today to receive first dibs on new wine vintages, vineyard events, new vintage playlists, and more!

  • Our Story
  • The Vineyard
  • Press
  • Journal
  • Wine Clubs
  • Events

Instagram

We’ve got a special holiday food and wine pack f We’ve got a special holiday food and wine pack for you!! 💥💥💥 We teamed up with three small Colorado companies to create a “Colorado Culinary Gift Pack” that’s filled with local wine and foodie treats!
•
What’s in the pack?
•
🥂 2019 Dry Riesling
🥂 2019 RRV White Blend
🥂 2018 Chardonnay
🥂 NV Fire + Ice Riesling
•
🌶 @misohotofficial chili paste
🌿 @thespiceguyco spice blends
🍅 @foragesisters smoked tomato jam
•
It’s priced at $130 and gets $15 flat-rate shipping to 41 states. We are shipping them out from our winery in Hotchkiss, and they are packed with LOVE!
•
Get the details via the link in our profile and #SHOPSMALL this season!
•
We’ll be sharing recipes, pairings, and tasting notes here on Instagram, so you’ll have plenty of inspiration to add a punch of flavor to your home cooking.
•
CHEERS!!
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #coloradowine #westelksava #whitewinechristmas #whitewinelover #holidaygiftideas #christmaswine #winetime #5280drinks #303drinks #highelevationwine #highelevationvineyards #rieslinglover #diningoutmagazine #coloRADical #shopsmallbusiness #coloradosmallbusiness
We just capped our very first pèt-nat, made with We just capped our very first pèt-nat, made with Chambourcin grapes from the Grand Valley, along with a little estate Riesling. 🍾🍾🍾 We are excited to see how this pink bubbly develops over the next few weeks.
•
Hopefully, we’ll be able to pop a couple bottles for NYE! We only made 12 bottles of this sparkling wine, so you’ll have to wait until next fall, when we make a larger drop.
•
Catch more BTS on our most recent reel and in our stories. 🎥
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #highelevationwine #highelevationvineyards #coloradosparklingwine #pétnat #petnat #methodeancestrale #chambourcinrosé #coloradorosé #drinkpink #cowine #coloradowine #westelksava #westelkswineries #foodwinewomen #femalewinemaker #visitcolorado #agritourism
R I E S L I N G U P D A T E —> Since our last p R I E S L I N G  U P D A T E —> Since our last post, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the status of our existing Riesling vines and how they weathered through the super-cold freeze that hit a few weeks ago.
•
We’ve heard from several neighboring vineyards that the bud damage was severe, and that 2021 yields are going to be low or non-existent for certain varieties. Buds that house next year’s grapes were formed over this past summer and hadn’t hardened off for dormancy, when temps dipped into single digits.
•
We are collecting bud samples from the vines this afternoon and getting an accurate prediction on bud damage in the next couple days. We are expecting a lot of damage to our primary buds, but we also know that Riesling is a pretty cold-hardy variety.
•
Even the clusters from this year’s harvest that you see in this photo are smaller than normal because we lost a lot of primary buds last fall.
•
On a positive note, our four tanks of Riesling are slowly fermenting around 55°F and showing great promise in flavor, acid balance, and complexity.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #highaltitudewines #whitewinelover #rieslinglover #rieslingislife #ibleedriesling #redstonevineyard #coloradowine #cowine #westelksava #alpinedesertwine #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker
Is this our next album cover!!? 😎 Nope. It’s Is this our next album cover!!? 😎  Nope. It’s actually the two of us at the end of the most hardcore two days of the season.
•
Last year, a dramatic early frost killed our newly planted Chardonnay vines, so we were especially nervous when we saw a similar climatic situation approaching this year.
•
We hope that we over-compensated in protecting all of the new vines that we planted this past spring, but this year’s freeze was even worse than last year’s, so ... fingers crossed.
•
Here we are, bundled up after mounding up over 1,200 vines with as much soil as we could manage, to cover the tender graft lines, as the snow was rolling in.
•
The last row of 44 vines was a test of our resolve. The temps dropped to 20°, the snow began to fall, and the sun set early. We turned up the drum-and-bass and channeled a do-or-die vibe.
•
We did the best we could, so we’ll see how we fared this next spring. For now, we are beyond grateful for a successful year at the tasting room but are simultaneously excited for a change of direction and shift of priorities in this colder season.
•
#reallife
•
•
•
•
#farmingishard #farmlife #stormcellarwine #westelksava #farmsohard #modfarm #modernfarmer #youngfarmers #redstonevineyard #coloradowine #cowine #highelevationfarming #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker #damnitscold @hollyandflora @big_zen
We are sending out an incredibly heartfelt thanks We are sending out an incredibly heartfelt thanks to our friend and chef @brandtbishop of @bishopqualitygoods for keeping our business deliciously alive this summer.
•
According to current regulations, as a winery, we cannot operate our tasting room, unless we partner with a restaurant or commercial kitchen. It only made sense to us to ask Brandt to create seasonally driven, locally sourced charcuterie boards, so that we could maintain our tasting room offerings.
•
We have sold them out every weekend, to rave reviews, during our tasting room season.
•
Thank you, Brandt, for always giving your all, sharing your personal taste, and supporting local, CO brands and growers on each plate you produced.
•
On the rare occasion that there was a leftover plate, we totally appreciated and enjoyed the love you put into these boards and into so many mouths and hearts here in the North Fork Valley.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #bishopqualitygoods #chefbrandtbishop #farmtotable #northforkvalley #hotchkisscolorado #visitcolorado #coloradoagriculture #coloradoagritourism @coagtourism #coloradowine #cowine #foodandwine #foodwinewomen #charcuterieboard #cheeseboard #cheeseboardingschool #eatlocallygrown #supportsmallbusiness #westelksava #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker #thekitchn #sunsetmag
Someone’s getting mighty big. 💥 Captain Murph Someone’s getting mighty big. 💥 Captain Murphy is learning new tricks, learning to love rides in the truck, and trying his best to get along with our cats.
•
He’s seven months old and just under 40 pounds. He proved challenging to have around during harvest this year, as he kept wanting to eat grapes, which are toxic to dogs. We were constantly having to call him away from the crush pad.
•
He’s learned how to give his paw on command and offer his “other paw”, when asked. We are working on “lie down” and “stay”, especially when vehicles drive by.
•
Come by and say hello to this sweet addition to our family. He’ll be here for hugs tomorrow at our final Friday at the tasting room.
•
Will we see you there?!
•
Visit our previous post for details on our fall release tasting, paired with seasonal small plates, curated by Chef @brandtbishop of @bishopqualitygoods, from 2:00 until 5:30 tomorrow.
•
Club members, drop by to pick up your fall release!! 💥💥💥
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #coloradowine #cowine #visithotchkiss #coloradostaycation #visitpaonia #visitcolorado #northforkvalley #whitewinelover #drinkcolorado #sommelierwinemaker #redstonevineyard #westelksava #westelkswineries #bordercolliepuppy #blackbordercollie #vineyarddog #winerydogs #captainmurphydog #bordercolliesofinstagram #workingdog
P O P – U P 💥 Fall wine release party with P O P –  U P 💥  Fall wine release party with chef @brandtbishop this Friday!!
•
Join us here at our tasting room this Friday, October 30th, for our official fall wine release, featuring the final six wines from the 2019 vintage!
•
Chef Brandt will be here from 2:00 until 5:30, serving up an eclectic menu of small plates, each priced around $10, with a vegetarian option! 🍴 Get the menu details in our stories.
•
We’ll be pouring free tastings of these new wines during our regular tasting room hours, from 11:00 until 7:00. We can’t wait to hear what you think!!
•
✔️ 2019 Viognier
✔️ 2019 Roussanne
✔️ 2019 RRV, white blend
✔️ NV Estate Fire + Ice Riesling
✔️ 2019 Estate Chardonnay
✔️ 2019 Estate Reserve Dry Riesling
•
While our spring release was filled with delicate whites and rosés, this fall selection is bolder, richer, and more textural — perfect for the cozy months and holiday cuisines ahead.
•
⚡️ Tastings are held outside, with groups seated at their own table, with adequate social distancing.
⚡️ Mask up! 😷 We’ll be masked up, as well, while we serve you.
⚡️ Our driveway is freshly graded and dry since the snowstorm, for those of you, who know what the drive up here can be like! 😬
•
See you here!! 🤩
•
Can’t make it? These are the wines featured in our fall wine club shipment. 🖥 Visit our website for details on how you can join!
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #northforkvalley #visitpaonia #visithotchkiss #coloradoagritourism #coloradowinetasting #coloradowine #cowine #drinkcolorado #5280drinks #fallwinerelease #whitewinelover #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker
We mounded up all 1,250 of our newly planted, graf We mounded up all 1,250 of our newly planted, grafted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines yesterday and the day before, and they are now nestled under 6-10” of soil. We are beyond tired but seriously thankful that we finished up the process just after dark, right after the snow began to fall.
•
Temperatures dipped down to 12°F last night, but hopefully, since we harvested our grapes from our producing vines a couple of weeks early, the buds for next year’s harvest are okay and the vines are further along in their progression toward dormancy.
•
Since we will hopefully be planting 4,000 vines next spring, we are researching a means for more efficient (mechanized) mounding to protect graft lines. Hand-mounding each vine is simply unfeasible. That’s a winter project. ⚡️ And it’s NOT for today.
•
Today is for relaxing and being grateful that the 2020 growing season is behind us.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #thefutureisgrafted #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #coldclimatewines #coldclimatevineyard #redstonevineyard #farmlife #vineyardlife #classof2024🍇 #whitewinelover #coloradowine #westelksava #westelkswineries #harvest2020
We brought in the entirety of our estate Riesling We brought in the entirety of our estate Riesling last weekend. It’s slowly fermenting, and we are slowly beginning to slow down, ourselves, as well. 😛 We are beyond honored to have been on the cover of the @denverpost this past Thursday.
•
Did you get a chance to read it?! 💥 @josie_sexton covered our challenging harvest beautifully, and it was rather surreal to see these photos by @wwoodyco from our harvest, which all feels like a blur at this moment.
•
Get the link in our bio and hear how our upcoming, to-be-released, 2019 Reserve Dry Riesling was produced last season and how this year has proven to be a challenging-yet-delicious vintage.
•
We are humbled and honored and thrilled to be part of the Colorado wine community. Josie highlights some of Colorado’s forward-thinking producers from around the state. We are in great company, and we are only collectively growing stronger.
•
TOGETHER.
•
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I only know what I CAN do.”
•
— Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek, “Into Darkness”
•
•
•
•
📷: @wwoodyco for the @denverpost stormcellarwine #coloradowine #denverpostfood #denverpost #denverpostdrinks #cowine #westelksava #westelkswineries #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #whitewinelover #rieslingistheanswer #ibleedriesling #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker #redstonevineyard #jaymeandsteve4ever 💥💥💥
#STORMCELLARWINE
We’ve got a special holiday food and wine pack f We’ve got a special holiday food and wine pack for you!! 💥💥💥 We teamed up with three small Colorado companies to create a “Colorado Culinary Gift Pack” that’s filled with local wine and foodie treats!
•
What’s in the pack?
•
🥂 2019 Dry Riesling
🥂 2019 RRV White Blend
🥂 2018 Chardonnay
🥂 NV Fire + Ice Riesling
•
🌶 @misohotofficial chili paste
🌿 @thespiceguyco spice blends
🍅 @foragesisters smoked tomato jam
•
It’s priced at $130 and gets $15 flat-rate shipping to 41 states. We are shipping them out from our winery in Hotchkiss, and they are packed with LOVE!
•
Get the details via the link in our profile and #SHOPSMALL this season!
•
We’ll be sharing recipes, pairings, and tasting notes here on Instagram, so you’ll have plenty of inspiration to add a punch of flavor to your home cooking.
•
CHEERS!!
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #coloradowine #westelksava #whitewinechristmas #whitewinelover #holidaygiftideas #christmaswine #winetime #5280drinks #303drinks #highelevationwine #highelevationvineyards #rieslinglover #diningoutmagazine #coloRADical #shopsmallbusiness #coloradosmallbusiness
We just capped our very first pèt-nat, made with We just capped our very first pèt-nat, made with Chambourcin grapes from the Grand Valley, along with a little estate Riesling. 🍾🍾🍾 We are excited to see how this pink bubbly develops over the next few weeks.
•
Hopefully, we’ll be able to pop a couple bottles for NYE! We only made 12 bottles of this sparkling wine, so you’ll have to wait until next fall, when we make a larger drop.
•
Catch more BTS on our most recent reel and in our stories. 🎥
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #highelevationwine #highelevationvineyards #coloradosparklingwine #pétnat #petnat #methodeancestrale #chambourcinrosé #coloradorosé #drinkpink #cowine #coloradowine #westelksava #westelkswineries #foodwinewomen #femalewinemaker #visitcolorado #agritourism
R I E S L I N G U P D A T E —> Since our last p R I E S L I N G  U P D A T E —> Since our last post, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the status of our existing Riesling vines and how they weathered through the super-cold freeze that hit a few weeks ago.
•
We’ve heard from several neighboring vineyards that the bud damage was severe, and that 2021 yields are going to be low or non-existent for certain varieties. Buds that house next year’s grapes were formed over this past summer and hadn’t hardened off for dormancy, when temps dipped into single digits.
•
We are collecting bud samples from the vines this afternoon and getting an accurate prediction on bud damage in the next couple days. We are expecting a lot of damage to our primary buds, but we also know that Riesling is a pretty cold-hardy variety.
•
Even the clusters from this year’s harvest that you see in this photo are smaller than normal because we lost a lot of primary buds last fall.
•
On a positive note, our four tanks of Riesling are slowly fermenting around 55°F and showing great promise in flavor, acid balance, and complexity.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #highaltitudewines #whitewinelover #rieslinglover #rieslingislife #ibleedriesling #redstonevineyard #coloradowine #cowine #westelksava #alpinedesertwine #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker
Is this our next album cover!!? 😎 Nope. It’s Is this our next album cover!!? 😎  Nope. It’s actually the two of us at the end of the most hardcore two days of the season.
•
Last year, a dramatic early frost killed our newly planted Chardonnay vines, so we were especially nervous when we saw a similar climatic situation approaching this year.
•
We hope that we over-compensated in protecting all of the new vines that we planted this past spring, but this year’s freeze was even worse than last year’s, so ... fingers crossed.
•
Here we are, bundled up after mounding up over 1,200 vines with as much soil as we could manage, to cover the tender graft lines, as the snow was rolling in.
•
The last row of 44 vines was a test of our resolve. The temps dropped to 20°, the snow began to fall, and the sun set early. We turned up the drum-and-bass and channeled a do-or-die vibe.
•
We did the best we could, so we’ll see how we fared this next spring. For now, we are beyond grateful for a successful year at the tasting room but are simultaneously excited for a change of direction and shift of priorities in this colder season.
•
#reallife
•
•
•
•
#farmingishard #farmlife #stormcellarwine #westelksava #farmsohard #modfarm #modernfarmer #youngfarmers #redstonevineyard #coloradowine #cowine #highelevationfarming #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker #damnitscold @hollyandflora @big_zen
We are sending out an incredibly heartfelt thanks We are sending out an incredibly heartfelt thanks to our friend and chef @brandtbishop of @bishopqualitygoods for keeping our business deliciously alive this summer.
•
According to current regulations, as a winery, we cannot operate our tasting room, unless we partner with a restaurant or commercial kitchen. It only made sense to us to ask Brandt to create seasonally driven, locally sourced charcuterie boards, so that we could maintain our tasting room offerings.
•
We have sold them out every weekend, to rave reviews, during our tasting room season.
•
Thank you, Brandt, for always giving your all, sharing your personal taste, and supporting local, CO brands and growers on each plate you produced.
•
On the rare occasion that there was a leftover plate, we totally appreciated and enjoyed the love you put into these boards and into so many mouths and hearts here in the North Fork Valley.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #bishopqualitygoods #chefbrandtbishop #farmtotable #northforkvalley #hotchkisscolorado #visitcolorado #coloradoagriculture #coloradoagritourism @coagtourism #coloradowine #cowine #foodandwine #foodwinewomen #charcuterieboard #cheeseboard #cheeseboardingschool #eatlocallygrown #supportsmallbusiness #westelksava #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker #thekitchn #sunsetmag
Someone’s getting mighty big. 💥 Captain Murph Someone’s getting mighty big. 💥 Captain Murphy is learning new tricks, learning to love rides in the truck, and trying his best to get along with our cats.
•
He’s seven months old and just under 40 pounds. He proved challenging to have around during harvest this year, as he kept wanting to eat grapes, which are toxic to dogs. We were constantly having to call him away from the crush pad.
•
He’s learned how to give his paw on command and offer his “other paw”, when asked. We are working on “lie down” and “stay”, especially when vehicles drive by.
•
Come by and say hello to this sweet addition to our family. He’ll be here for hugs tomorrow at our final Friday at the tasting room.
•
Will we see you there?!
•
Visit our previous post for details on our fall release tasting, paired with seasonal small plates, curated by Chef @brandtbishop of @bishopqualitygoods, from 2:00 until 5:30 tomorrow.
•
Club members, drop by to pick up your fall release!! 💥💥💥
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #coloradowine #cowine #visithotchkiss #coloradostaycation #visitpaonia #visitcolorado #northforkvalley #whitewinelover #drinkcolorado #sommelierwinemaker #redstonevineyard #westelksava #westelkswineries #bordercolliepuppy #blackbordercollie #vineyarddog #winerydogs #captainmurphydog #bordercolliesofinstagram #workingdog
P O P – U P 💥 Fall wine release party with P O P –  U P 💥  Fall wine release party with chef @brandtbishop this Friday!!
•
Join us here at our tasting room this Friday, October 30th, for our official fall wine release, featuring the final six wines from the 2019 vintage!
•
Chef Brandt will be here from 2:00 until 5:30, serving up an eclectic menu of small plates, each priced around $10, with a vegetarian option! 🍴 Get the menu details in our stories.
•
We’ll be pouring free tastings of these new wines during our regular tasting room hours, from 11:00 until 7:00. We can’t wait to hear what you think!!
•
✔️ 2019 Viognier
✔️ 2019 Roussanne
✔️ 2019 RRV, white blend
✔️ NV Estate Fire + Ice Riesling
✔️ 2019 Estate Chardonnay
✔️ 2019 Estate Reserve Dry Riesling
•
While our spring release was filled with delicate whites and rosés, this fall selection is bolder, richer, and more textural — perfect for the cozy months and holiday cuisines ahead.
•
⚡️ Tastings are held outside, with groups seated at their own table, with adequate social distancing.
⚡️ Mask up! 😷 We’ll be masked up, as well, while we serve you.
⚡️ Our driveway is freshly graded and dry since the snowstorm, for those of you, who know what the drive up here can be like! 😬
•
See you here!! 🤩
•
Can’t make it? These are the wines featured in our fall wine club shipment. 🖥 Visit our website for details on how you can join!
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #northforkvalley #visitpaonia #visithotchkiss #coloradoagritourism #coloradowinetasting #coloradowine #cowine #drinkcolorado #5280drinks #fallwinerelease #whitewinelover #sommlife #sommelierwinemaker
We mounded up all 1,250 of our newly planted, graf We mounded up all 1,250 of our newly planted, grafted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines yesterday and the day before, and they are now nestled under 6-10” of soil. We are beyond tired but seriously thankful that we finished up the process just after dark, right after the snow began to fall.
•
Temperatures dipped down to 12°F last night, but hopefully, since we harvested our grapes from our producing vines a couple of weeks early, the buds for next year’s harvest are okay and the vines are further along in their progression toward dormancy.
•
Since we will hopefully be planting 4,000 vines next spring, we are researching a means for more efficient (mechanized) mounding to protect graft lines. Hand-mounding each vine is simply unfeasible. That’s a winter project. ⚡️ And it’s NOT for today.
•
Today is for relaxing and being grateful that the 2020 growing season is behind us.
•
•
•
•
#stormcellarwine #thefutureisgrafted #highelevationvineyards #highelevationwine #coldclimatewines #coldclimatevineyard #redstonevineyard #farmlife #vineyardlife #classof2024🍇 #whitewinelover #coloradowine #westelksava #westelkswineries #harvest2020
#STORMCELLARWINE

            

The Storm Cellar  |  14139 Runzel Gulch Road, Hotchkiss, CO 81419  |  970.589.3142

Copyright © 2020 · The Storm Cellar | Website design by Peppercorn Creative