Centennial Club Newsletter

Estate Update

Stephanie Wycoff  |  Estate Director

As you may know, 2020 marked our 125th Anniversary of Seghesio Family Vineyards. In anticipation of this milestone, we considered how best to celebrate the stories, the people, and the history of Seghesio. We felt that the best way to honor the past was to ensure our future, and we began to think about how we could breathe fresh life into every element that would carry us forward into the next chapter – the next 125 years.

Through the generations has always come evolution. We would not be where we are today without looking forward and seizing opportunities. One of the most obvious and exciting ways we sought to commemorate this milestone was to freshen up our look – at the winery and on the outside of every bottle of wine. As guests are welcomed back into tasting room this season, you’ll notice a fresh aesthetic and new seating areas, a nod to an Italian bistro setting… and in your May Release, you’ll find slightly refreshed label designs for our Signature Zins (2019 Rockpile) and Single Vineyard Zins (2019 Saini). Nothing dramatically different of course, as were thoughtful about maintaining the core elements that always make a bottle of Seghesio Zinfandel so recognizable while making them look even sharper (a.k.a. more legible and more cohesive when all our Zins are placed next to one another on your table). Our Single Vineyard Zinfandel labels are inspired by the classic labels of great Barolos that hail, like our founders, from the Piedmont region of Italy – the front label captures the essence of what makes each of these vineyards unique and compelling.

Another place we’ve made some updates is to our website, Seghesio.com. If you haven’t visited or explored it yet, we encourage you to do so. We have new videos, recipes, stories, photography, and plenty more to enjoy! And to keep things easy for you, your member login experience has remined unchanged, but of course, our fantastic wine club team is always here to assist you personally.

There will be more to share as we continue into 2021, and we sincerely hope our loyal fans, friends and extended family are as excited as we are to experience the new energy behind Seghesio Family Vineyards in 2021. As we did this work, we kept coming back to the idea of family and what that means to us today. The answer we found was that, for our Seghesio team, family is more than the one you’re born into, it’s also the one you choose.

Thank you for choosing us! We love hearing from our extended Seghesio family so we hope you will share your thoughts and impressions of these new labels and your tasting room experience with our team.

Winemaking Update

Andy Robinson  |  Winemaker

Springtime is here in Sonoma County! The cellar is starting to warm up with some recent 80+ degree days and all the 2020 reds have been stabilized and are showing their potential now. Our winemaking team is busy staying ahead of the wines with racking and topping, and we’re also taking this time to propose blends for the 2020 finished wines. We have completed our late-winter bottling of the 2019 reds and 2020 Rosato (don’t miss your pre-release opportunity to get some this month!) and white wines, so now our focus turns completely to the 2020 reds. We’ll take this opportunity to adjust barrel aging, and even possibly combine some wines that we feel will age better as blends. This is all in preparation for the significant task of assembling the 2020 Sonoma Zinfandel (affectionately referred to by those “in the know” as the Blue Cap), which comprises the vast majority of our production.

Most of the action this time of year is truly taking place in our vineyards. It is looking increasingly likely that we are headed for a low rainfall year and with each passing week our hopes of a spring rainstorm dwindle. The vines have started to grow in most of our vineyard locations. While the days have started to warm up, our nighttime temperatures can still dip into the 30°F’s regularly, which poses the danger of frost. Our vineyards have temperature alarms that notify our employees if the air reaches 35°F. To keep the vines from being damaged, the team will closely monitor the temperature changes and turn on the wind machines or overhead sprinklers if the conditions require it… needless to say, our viticulture director and 5th generation Seghesio Family member, Ned Neumiller, doesn’t get his best sleep this time of year.

During the daytime the crew is actively working to incorporate our cover crops into the vineyards. This accomplishes two things at this time of year. The legumes that have trapped nutrients over the winter can now start to decompose and make them available for the vines, and we are able to trap in remaining moisture in the soil by stopping the cover crops from using all available water. Once the nighttime temperatures warm up, the vines will grow incredibly quickly so it’s important to stay ahead early or else we can be playing catch-up all season. Luckily, the cavalry has arrived – our seasonal vineyard crew has arrived and we’re ready to take on the growing season!