Our Philosophy
Becoming a commercial winery is not for the faint of heart.
More than one of our new friends in the wine industry began our conversations with the warning, “You know, you are crazy to be doing this.” Our mental health aside, our twenty years of experience have helped us develop a clear “vision” of how to make exceptional, small production wines.
Remain Small Enough to Respect the Uniqueness of Grapes and Wine
Wine is a living entity. It is ever changing and among the most individualistic, unique, and enigmatic of all of nature’s creations. The choices winemakers have in shaping their wines are virtually limitless. The key to making great wine is to tailor one’s decisions to what nature brings you each season.
Grapes are unpredictable, even within the same year and grape variety. Every vineyard is different. Each grower has their own style of tending their vines. Different locations in the vineyard can make an enormous difference to the grapes that are produced; each location receives more or less sun, wind, and water, and can have a different mineral composition in the soil, which will affect drainage patterns, etc. Believe it or not, the uniqueness extends to the level of each grape cluster, depending on the size of the cluster, the tightness of the grapes within a cluster, or the amount of sunlight that the canopy permits onto the berries. This multitude of variables ultimately impacts the character of the wine we find in the bottle.
There are no “standard formulas” or “recipes” that can be used to control the diversity of issues that need to be considered in making a great wine. Vintners make hundreds of decisions involving timing, yeast, fermentation, chemistry, barrels, blending, and bottling each year, and no two years are the same. All of this requires a dedication to both science and art in order to create a wine you will remember years after you took your last sip.
Staying at a small production is at the core of our philosophy of managing the complex task of making world-class wines. Achievement of our ambitious mission requires that we use all of our senses-taste, smell, touch, feel, and sight-to make the many decisions that confront the winemaker. Wine is always changing and offering new challenges throughout its life. The same wine will taste completely different depending on the type and age of the barrel, the wine’s current stage of fermentation, or the age of the wine. Eventually it all comes together as a finished product when you choose to bottle the wine.
At Lost Canyon Winery, this attention to detail is what makes our wines special, whether it is selecting the right vineyard, finding the correct grape clones, sorting the individual grape clusters at harvest, making fermentation decisions at crush, tracking the progress of the wine in every barrel, or the countless daily decisions the winemaker must respond to throughout the life of the wine. We believe that producing a quality wine means we are on the wine’s timetable, and not the reverse. Ultimately we do not control the grape’s development, but instead we are there to guide and influence the wine to meet its innate potential. Only at our smaller production size can this be accomplished.
Spare No Expense Obtaining the Highest Quality Grapes and Maintaining Close Partnerships with Great Growers
Everyone has heard the saying, “You can make poor wine out of great grapes, but not great wine out of poor grapes.” It couldn’t be truer. More and more, fine wine is “made” in the vineyard. This requires that winemakers work with growers to make decisions in the vineyard well before the grapes are harvested and we begin our work.
This year we have inaugurated long-term agreements with some of the best known and sought after vineyards in Sonoma County. Our choice was the Russian River and Carneros appellations for our pinot Noir wines. We have contracted with Dutton Ranch to source fruit from their highly desired Morelli Lane Vineyard. Additionally, we have an agreement with the highly respected Saralee’s Vineyards for our other Russian River pinot Noir. Our other choice for pinot Noir was the Carneros appellation of Sonoma County. Carneros is another cool region close to the Bayand these grapes come from the vineyard of one of the pioneers of high quality pinot Noir, Francis Mahoney, and his Las Brisas Vineyard.
Our syrahs are sourced from two other Sonoma vineyards that take advantage of the areas special climate. The cool breezes and warm days slowly ripen the syrah fruit and give it a richness and intensity that offers complexity and delights the senses. We have entered into a relationship with Alegria Vineyards in the Russian River whose wines have won numerous awards. Our other syrah comes from southern Sonoma County. We are continuing to make syrah from the Stage Gulch Vineyards located in the Sonoma Coast appellation. The grapes from this area ripen later and benefit from the longer hang time that complements our winemaking style.
Specialize in Varietals You Love
Part of our vision was to “make wines that we personally enjoy.” Our first choice, pinot Noir, was an easy decision. We have been making pinot Noir forever, and have always been seduced by its complexity, subtlety, and delicacy. We also have a proven track record of making world-class pinot Noir. Our second choice was syrah. This variety came as a bit of a surprise to all of us. While we had all experienced syrah/shiraz, the wines we tasted were from hot growing regions and were very earthy, with excess fruit, hot, and lacked the complexity we were looking to achieve. Our epiphany occurred when we tasted syrah that had been grown in cooler climates. These wines ‘knocked our socks off.’ Cool region syrah’s have the body and complexity we desired, but also retain the distinctive syrah character that we sought. And, from a marketing perspective, it appears that a growing number of consumers are looking for something new and interesting and are coming to this same conclusion. We are exited about producing these small production wines and offering them to the wine loving public.
The Lost Canyon Promise
Winemaking is exhilarating, fascinating, and complicated. In the end, what we learned is that winemakers are in the business of furnishing consumers with something more than the purchase of a beverage, we make wine in order to provide the wine lover an extraordinary experience. An experience they will remember for years.
