Lab Côtes Wines
June 2021:
We have a ways to go before we have enough grapes to make wine. Our hope is to make Meritage blends with our 3 Bordeau varietals (Cab, Cab Franc, and Merlot) starting in 2023.

Lab Côtes Wines (LCW), is so named as a blend of Cindy’s career as a psychophysiologist and her newfound realization that winemaking is as much a science as an art.

We also hope to sell some of our Cab grapes to support our winemaking hobby. Yountville AVA on Mt. Veeder, you ask? Are we sure? Yup - we’re sure. Mt. Veeder AVA stops at 400ft above sea level and, as well, on the other (west) side of the Dry Creek (whichever is highest). And Yountville AVA confirmed that its boundary butts right up to the Mt. Veeder boundary.

September 2022
At the beginning of the season, we debated dropping the grapes to allow the vines to put all their power into strengthening their infrastructure. But, as we saw the grapes looking better and better and the vines doing quite well, we decided to keep them.

Last week, we bought our first barrel. It’s a ½ barrel, so we just put it in the back seat of our car. Driving home, it felt like we had a baby in a car seat. It’s new French oak MT+ and our friend and home winemaker Tom Nelson in Yountville will help us (in exchange for my new title as Cellar Rat for him).

February ‘23
Amazingly, the wine has survived my naive ability to make it. It went through first fermentation as expected, but second fermentation took till the end of December. We turned off the heat, added SO2, and kept it in the stainless tank adding one chain of French Oak staves. We should get about 4 cases.

April ‘23.
The wine is actually doing just fine. We have it in airconditioning - maintaining temps in the 60*s. Once the building is cleaned out and made into a real winery, it should maintain lower temps.

Aug ‘23
We now have an official winery. The CS/CF blend from last year is tasting great as a fruity, easy-drinking Cab. We may bottle it soon to make room for next year’s wine.

Sept and Oct ‘23:
Our second vintage was harvested. Merlot was first, then the crazy Chardonnay (2 ½ gallons from 34 vines - these will be replaced next year so they are properly grafted with CF). Then on Oct 14th, we picked and field-blended the Cf (1 1/2 gals) and CS (120 gals).