New Tasting Rooms!

We are pleased to announce our new tasting room at Swan's Market (538 9th St, Oakland) every Friday 5-9pm. Come relax and enjoy our latest wines in the lovely Old Oakland.

In May, our tasting room hours will expand to Fri 12-9pm & Sat 12-6pm.

Stay tuned for our new tasting room with Linden Street Brewery! Learn more about how you can visit us.

2007 Bottling Update

As many of you know last year was a challenging year in regards to bottling and, although I have been able to talk to many of you in person about the situation regarding bottling the 2007 Vintage, I wanted to to post a general overview of what has been going on and where we’re headed in 2012.

Our big problem for the last year+ is that we ran out of bottled wine. In late 2009 we were set to bottle the 2007’s and had the opportunity to co-bottle with another winery at a large winery/bottling facility in Napa. The other winery was looking to bottle over 10,000 cases and by joint purchasing our materials and splitting labor I could save thousands of dollars on my overall bottling costs.

Problems started first with the other winery pushing back the bottling date first one month and then a second. The biggest problem however, came when the other winery rather suddenly pulled out entirely, skipped town and stiffed me, all of the suppliers and the Napa bottling facility. At that point everyone went into lawyer-mode and the 12,000 cases of bottles that had been ordered and were delivered to the Napa bottling facility got confiscated as collateral. This led to a few hectic months of me trying to make it clear to everyone else’s lawyers that I was a victim and not a target (thank goodness this was successful) and then many more months waiting for them to decide what they were going to do with all of the bottling materials. This was compounded by the fact that last November the Napa bottling facility filed for bankruptcy and promptly went out of business with all of the bottles still stranded on their property.

Due to all of these issues I have been unable to bottle my 2007 wines as expected and 2010/11 has been a little rough. Things are looking up however. After 18 months of negotiation I finally got all of my glass bottles back in August and, at the same time, merged part of my business with a new bottling facility in Napa to guarantee that this will never happen again. I am currently planning to bottle my 2007 and 2008 vintages early next year in conjunction with the opening of my new tasting room(s).

Tasting Room Update: If you have been following my periodic website/Facebook updates for the last year then you are aware of my continuing efforts to open a shared tasting room with Linden Street Brewery in Oakland. Between the City of Oakland and Alcohol Beverage Control this process has gone on for over a year now and still does not have a definitive end in sight. As of last month we finally convinced ABC to let Adam (owner brewer at Linden) pour his own beer at his own brewery (strangely harder than you think it should be). Approvals for wine are still in process…

In the mean time, it will come as surprise to everyone (and even me to some degree) to learn that I have just signed a lease on a second tasting room location at Swan’s Market in Old Oakland. The official opening date for this spot isn’t until I get final ABC approval (hopefully quicker and easier than the Linden project) sometime next month. In the mean time however, stay tuned for a handful of special events at the Swan’s location in conjunction with Taylor’s Sausages and Cosecha.

All-in-all 2012 looks like it’s going to be an exciting time with a bunch of new wines in bottle and on tap at our new tasting room(s). Thank you for all for your patience, understanding and good wishes.

Regards, Brendan