Walter Hansel

My father, Walter, loved to grow everything from kiwi to oriental pears and more. In the 1970's he enlisted my help to plant 257 chardonnay vines. Throughout the 1980's our entire family would harvest the half acre of grapes and my father and I would make the wine; filling two barrels, which equaled 50 cases of wine.

Initially these wines were hard to drink, but with the help of my friend, Tom Rochioli, I developed a passion to underst...

Although we started with just 257 vines we currently farm 80 acres consisting of a total of 11 different clones. All of our vineyards are contigous to each other with the winery facility situated in the center, making farming, harvesting and processing more efficient and easier to control quality. We farm about 80 acres consisting of 6 pinot noir clones and 7 chardonnay clones, planted to 2 varieites of rootstock and trellisted in a 7 wire sys...

Our processes are done in a way that each wine is allowed to express its unique character; never compromising the wine's freshness, finesse or texture. We hand harvest and manually sort; once in the vineyard and once in the winery. The Pinot Noir is destemed and gravity guides the whole berries into open topped fermenters.

The Chardonnay is whole-cluster pressed into French oak for fermentation. The primary fermentation lasts 2-3 weeks...