In the Vineyards: What's a Bud Break and why celebrate it?

[Michael Chiarello Blog Feed]

I’ve always liked wines better if I personally know the people who make them. The same goes for food; if I have a relationship with a chef, I tend to enjoy their foods more because I know what they are all about, and how their personality fuels their creations. For my little family winery, Chiarello Family Vineyards (link) we’ve taken a personal approach to celebrating the little known spring event here in the vineyards, the bud break, as a way to introduce our wine fans to what we are all about.Everyone who loves wine knows about the season called “Harvest.” But the precursor to wine making is wine growing, and that begins with the winter pruning and the bud break. Since I farm my own vineyards around my home, the bud break is the most exciting sign that a new season has begun. Our Bud Break Celebration is always in April (April 26th this year). By then, you can usually see 15 or 16 inch shafts growing from the rootstock. There’s a very particular feel in the vineyards during that time. The soil is recently tilled, it has all those great aromas of spring, and you see just the beginnings of the clusters form – all very exciting to me. It’s also when we release two of our wines (http://chiarellofamilyvineyards.com/) –our 2006 Giana Zinfandel (http://store.nexternal.com/shared/St...p?CS=chiarello StoreType=BtoC Count1=216472804 Count2=133613228 ProductID=43 Target=products.asp) and our 2005 Eileen Cabernet (http://store.nexternal.com/shared/St...p?CS=chiarello StoreType=BtoC Count1=579250514 Count2=496390938 ProductID=35 Target=products.asp) (Cabernet gets more time in the barrel and the bottle for aging before release).The Bud Break party is a gathering of our biggest wine fans from around the country. I have a philosophy that we don’t like to allocate our wine - we like to allocate our people. We find people that we like and let them buy enough wine to enjoy. And so these are our best customers – best not because they’re buying the most, but because they’re interested in the story of our wines and the personal intentions behind them.For the party chef Nick Ritchie and I cook for a couple of days straight, and my wife Eileen sets up a 125-foot table right in the vineyard for the guests. Before the meal we barrel taste some of the yet-to-be-released wines, then pair up all our wines with a full blown feast! I highly recommend making an event like this part of your next visit to the Napa Valley, and encourage you to seek them out with your favorite wineries. It will make for a most memorable trip, and like I believe, you’ll love the wines even more once you’ve met the people they represent.

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[BerryBaby]

I want to go to the party...sounds like a wonderful event!

Oregon has some great wineries as well but there is nothing like Napa Valley. That use to be one of my favorite weekend trips when we lived in the Bay Area.