Happy New Year
The beginning of a new year always holds so much promise. Hope, aspiration, and the drive for improvement inspire us all to look ahead. This coming year brings a tremendous amount of excitement for us here at Tira Nanza, from our wedding to our first wine release and planting almost 12 acres of new vineyards, but even with all of that to come we find ourselves reflecting on 2021. While our hopes for 2022 are high, it is gratitude for the past year that defines this time for us.
We’re grateful for everything we were able to accomplish on the ranch in 2021. From our first harvest, to picking and pressing our first olives for oil, and to the myriad of other projects that helped transform this place, the past year was full of action. The 2021 growing season was by no means an easy one, with yields down across California due to drought conditions, but it did make for fantastic fruit quality. We’re honored that our inaugural Tira Nanza offerings will be from a vintage that holds such high potential. The feeling of seeing an entire growing season’s worth of work culminate in the joy of our first harvest on this ranch is one that will keep us inspired for years to come.
Over the past 12 months, we have incorporated new farming practices like using biodynamic sprays and running cattle in the vineyard to bring life back to the soil. We have successfully transitioned some vineyard blocks to dry-farming, even in the midst of a drought. We harvested half a ton of olives which we pressed into beautiful oil. We began the development of a 1.5 acre garden that today is still producing bushels of kale and broccoli. On top of all that we continued to gain a better understanding of this amazing land we are so lucky to call home. For those reasons and many more, a year that opened with hope now closes with gratitude.
Where then does that leave us for 2022? So far this winter we have been lucky enough to receive around 14” of rain putting us about 13.5” ahead of where we were this time last year. This rain coupled with what has been a very cold start to the winter have made for perfect conditions for the dormant vines. The rain is helping to replenish the water table and will provide more available water for the vines when they start to grow again, while the cold has signaled the vines to enter their vital dormant stage for the winter. All of this rain has the ranch looking as green as it ever has during our time here much to the happiness of the almost 30 cattle currently calling Tira Nanza home. We are continuing preparations on the new vineyard developments as we get ready to receive more than 8,000 Syrah vines to be planted on our hillside and a similar number of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot vines to be planted near our lower vineyards.
As far as our 2021 wines go, the reds will spend 2022 in barrels and our Viognier and Rose are in tanks awaiting filtration and bottling before being sent out to be enjoyed by all of you. In the coming weeks, we will send an email to everyone on our allocation list with purchase instructions and further details. Come April we will be shipping out our first allocation wines! We are touched that so many of you signed up for our allocation and are thrilled how the wines came out. We truly can’t wait to share them with you.
When we first moved to Tira Nanza we made a list of “winter projects”. On a ranch, this refers to non-vital things that you can work on during the quiet days of winter. 18 months in, the quiet time of year has yet to show itself, but we have managed to cross off a lot of those projects anyway. With our first wine release around the corner and our wedding coming up in June, things don’t look likely to get a lot quieter but that’s just fine with us. We are grateful for what’s behind us, excited for what’s ahead of us, and as always, thankful to be able to share it with all of you.
Cheers,
-Greg & Sydney