Wine process Vimeo
Pure, From Ground to Glass
Woodriver Cellars was founded on a couple of basic principles. Start with the best ingredients possible and don't cut any corners. This means that every step in the wine making process is laboriously handled with the utmost detail.

Before the first vine comes alive in Spring, we spend time preparing the soil in our vineyard and pruning the canopies. This insures that each and every grape on every vine receives the proper amount of nourishment. When a vineyard isn't pruned correctly, a large number of grapes will attempt to ripen on a single root system. Although this gives you more grapes to work with and in effect drives cost down, the result is a less than ideal batch of grapes. By preparing and pruning, we create optimal conditions in our vineyard to produce amazing, juicy grapes.

In step two, we remove the grapes from the vines. There are two ways of doing this: 1) the easiest and most cost effective way is to use a large machine, called a harvester, that can clear the grapes off hundreds of vines in very little time. The downside is that it has no real control on what it is pulling off the vine. Whether a grape is ripe or rotten, (or even a grape at all), the harvester doesn't care. It's job is simply to clear the vines. 2) The other way is to cut every grape cluster off the vine by hand. At Woodriver, we do this to ensure the quality of the grapes by making sure they are harvest ready and not rotten. Vineyards like to talk about what goes into their wines that make them great. At Woodriver, we're just as excited about what we keep out. Some cut corners, we cut grapes.

After the grapes have been crushed and destemmed, we let them soak on the skins for up to 3 or 4 weeks drawing all of the tannins, flavor and color from the skins. Then we finish fermenting and aging exclusively in french oak barrels. When it comes to barrels, there are many different options to choose from. We've chosen the absolute best barrels and consequently the most costly. After all the work growing and picking grapes by hand, we just couldn't allow ourselves to put our hard earned harvest into lower quality barrels. The results of the tight grained wood are more complex flavors like vinilla, spice and butter. It takes a little longer for the french oak to pass along it's benefits, but we're in no hurry.

The final step in the process is bottling. Each wine has unique, subtle characteristics that can be diluted if the wrong bottle or cork is used. With each new Woodriver wine we spend significant time, carefully considering the size and coloring of our bottles. We make sure the bottle will enhance the wine and not detract from it.

After putting on the labels and storing the bottles for a number of months and sometimes years, it's delivered to our tasting room for you to enjoy. When you pour your favorite Woodriver wine into your glass, remember that it was hand-picked, stored patiently and delivered as pure as possible. This is the result of flawless ingredients, never cutting corners and being in complete control of every step of the process. Woodriver wines, Pure From Ground to Glass.