Patrick Muran
As an estate winery we produce wines that start really in the soil, the vineyard with our clonal selection, our plant selection. This is a slow process, we have to take it year by year. Things that are implemented this year may not come to fruition for two or three years but we are constantly making strides to improve quality over all. It starts in the vineyard and it translates in winemaking.
As we approach picking time, we are passing the baton and so we have to be in constant communication to determine when the ideal stage is to pick grapes and there really is a short window for the ideal ripening period so we are constantly assessing, evaluating quality and then timing on each pick.
This facility allows us to have the tools that enable us to make uncompromising choices. It’s a rare circumstance to have the time, the equipment, the location and the tools necessary to make truly distinct wine.
Being cut into a hillside, we have the luxury of using gravity as opposed to pumps and other mechanisms to deliver our fruit to tank. It allows us to really control what we are looking for in that particular type of grape that we are working with. This gravity system we have available to us can be gentle, soft, it can be non-invasive or intrusive to the grapes. We have the luxury of 72 tanks that allows us the ultimate control and opportunity to have expressive and interesting wines develop.
Molly Bohlman
I am the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay Winemaker for Niner Wine Estates and Pinot Noir for me was the first wine that I had that made me say ‘I want to make this varietal’ and to me Pinot Noir has different styles and they are all really appealing.
With Pinot Noir you can make a bright sparkling wine, you can make a light-bodied elegant wine, you can make a bold, hedonistic style of wine and they are all really delicious and all pair really well with food. Chardonnay I also like because you can make it in so many different styles. I feel like there is aChardonnay style for everybody. It’s one of the classic grapes, as Pinot Noir is.
There’s every tool that a winemaker could possibly dream of to work with at these two wineries that we have; the Craft Winery and the Main Winery. The ideals and the beliefs behind what is going on at Niner really align with my own. I really believe it is important to have a family-owned company that is focused on sustainability, both in the vineyards and the winery and creating a really high-quality product by having people that are passionate behind it.
Patrick Muran
We are after site-specific farming. We have individual barrels for individual varieties, individual blocks and we really try to tailor each one of our blocks within each vineyard to its expression and tailor what we want to apply to it to enhance the qualities we are looking for and perhaps diminish qualities we find uninteresting.
We take our time. We are not in this to push volume through this facility, we are focused on quality so we’re taking the extra time, the energy and the labor to enhance the expression of the individual batches, and the individual blocks and try to translate that all the way through to the bottle.
Fog Catcher is the pinnacle of our production. So this is taking the premier lots of our Cabernet, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc lots and composing them in a way to create the ultimate blend without recipe and without design to make a wine that is truly exceptional and that is ageworthy.
Our estate Cab is a beautiful expression of what we do here in Paso on both the east side and west side. We go to the east side to Bootjack Ranch for finesse, supple tannins, nice soft introduction with some bright cherry fruit elements. Then we come to our west side Heart Hill Vineyard to provide our backbone, rigidity, structure, dark earth elements and things of that nature.
My vision as a winemaker is to make something that is truly memorable. To make something that speaks of the location, that speaks of the technique, that speaks of creativity and make something that people can reflect on and have an appreciation for.
Molly Bohlman
I love what I do because making wine is a complete sensory experience. I have to use all of my senses during harvest every day I have to listen to the barrels as they ferment and they’ll crackle and pop. I have to look at the vineyard and see how the vines are developing and how the grapes look.
I have to taste the wine, of course, in the fermenter and see how it’s developing. I have to touch the fermenters and see if they are putting off heat. So to me it is really an all-encompassing experience and it is really satisfying and something that I love is to go home exhausted at the end of the day knowing that I made this great product.
