Looks like 2 from Alder Springs (rose and a chardonnay), and a Blanc de Noirs from Brousseau Vineyard.
I’m all in. Who else is buying??
just bumped the other under the wire thread with the same info.
I’m all in!
Me!
Would love to get all Rose’ but I’m in.
We popped a '12 UTW Bedrock Vineyard “Lambrusco” on Monday. Excellent BBQ wine and in a really good place right now.
Bought some retail from the '12 vintage and loved it. Really hope there’s some left over after the first wave…
Morgan did send out a note to say there was more quantity in this release so there should be a lot of first timers added.
I loved everything from the last release so I’m absolutely all in. 
I would love to, but I…just…have…to…stop!
Any idea on prices?
I am on the secondary list later. So leave me a few. Thanks!
What were the prices last year?
Phil Jones
$50 each. 3 bottle or more orders received $15 shipping.
$50 per if I remember correctly.
If I was a betting man, I’d guess they’re similar this year. Chris and Morgan are awesome and somehow seem to keep prices pretty consistent Y/Y (using Bedrock as my case study here).
I just had the privilege a few days ago of tasting with Chris sitting in the Bedrock Vineyard. He feels this is the vintage where they have really hit their stride with sparkling wine.
Any more details/notes on the wines being released tomorrow? I’m likely 100% in, but I would love to hear more if anyone has anything!
The 11’s were in fairness not that good, they were nowhere near a $50 bubbly, the 12’s on release were also not that great but with a year of age on them they are maturing into something decent and becoming a good bubbly. Im intrigued what the 13’s could be like with a year or twos age
I thought the 12s were outstanding on release with a bit of air, but agree that it was best to hold them for at least a year or two.
-Al
Today is the day! Hoping to see some more notes on the wines and def curious about pricing this year. Either way, im likely 100% all in.
Will someone give a shout when the offer is live? I’ve checked in a few times today and nothing yet
Sorry for the delay everyone! We ran into a shipping glitch that we were trying to fix.
Here is the release letter for the time being.
We are excited to get some of the 2013s out into the world!
Cheers!
Chris
Under The Wire
Summer 2016 Offer
THE NITTY-GRITTY
Allocations are guaranteed until Sunday, June 12th at Midnight Pacific time. If you are not allocated as much as you would like, please use the wish list function. All of the wines are tightly allocated, but there is always some wine left to redistribute.
There is $25 pro-rated Ground shipping on orders of 6 bottles or more.
Due to a unforeseen technical glitch, customers purchasing 1-6 bottles will be charged for shipping after the order is placed. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Orders will ship in the fall when the weather cooperates. If you would like to receive the wines sooner, email us about expedited shipping. If you have any specific instructions or questions, please put them in the Ship Comments on your order or email info@under-the-wire.com
The pick up day will be July 9th from 12-5pm at 19320 Orange Ave Sonoma, CA. As always, we will be pouring some wines, including previews of the upcoming Bedrock Fall release.
RELEASE LETTER
“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” David Bowie
Remembering 2013
One of wine’s most beautiful aspects is that it gives the chance to look back at a particular year. Wine is, for the most part, annual. It can provide a touchstone for a place and time: a marriage, a child’s birth, a graduation, or someone’s passing. It can fill you with memories and even nostalgia. We love this. For those of us that tinker and toy with making the stuff, in all of its many blessed iterations, the vintage is not just the end product but also a means to remember the trials, tribulations, successes, and abject failures from the moment the vines push bud in the Spring to this moment when we push them out the door.
For me, Chris, 2013 was the year I moved across the country to dive into making wine with one of my best friends. I left the only place I had lived and went into business full time with Morgan (he says hi). It was a scary proposition but has ended up being one of the best decisions of my life. And it was not the only adjustment in 2013. We somehow built a winery in eight months, took on debt, worked even more insane hours than normal, and hired our first employees. There was plenty of stress over obtaining permits, cantilevering tanks into place, getting glycol plumbed to tanks, spending hours on the scissor-lift and Skytrak, arguing with contractors (that damn plumber!), etc. You know, the glamorous part of winemaking. And grapes were coming, fast.
Even though we did put the first grapes of the year into tanks that were not yet plumbed for chilling (Monte Rosso Zinfandel no less), everything somehow worked out. The new members of the Bedrock family, Luke and Cody, confirmed our suspicion that dedication and talent trump youth. And beyond this, 2013 was simply a brilliant vintage across all varieties and vineyards we work with.
As I started writing this release letter, I became unmoored in a veritable avalanche of memories. Here are a couple of my favorites.
Brosseau Vineyard
This one is a nail biter.
Harvest is filled with adventures, and Brosseau is usually the first. Planted in the shadow of the Pinnacles at 1600’, it is a gorgeous way to start off harvest. However, like many beautiful places, it is remote and located at the top of a sketchy, winding, single-lane road snaking from the Salinas Valley floor to the top of the Gabilan Mountains.
In 2013 we got enough Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that it required us to bring two flatbed trucks to avoid being caught at the notoriously strict Gilroy scales (Morgan was read the riot act a couple years earlier). Cody and I drove down the night before and camped at the vineyard, waking up at 3am to go out with the crew as they picked in the cool of night. Brosseau is planted on a rolling landscape and we take the grapes from the swales. As you go from the top of the hill to the bottom and then back up, you feel the inversion layer. The low spots are typically 5-6 degrees cooler than the rises, which preserves the acidity that is great for bubbles. However, the vineyard crops at almost nothing and Chardonnay is small-clustered to begin with, which made for a very long pick.
As day broke, we loaded the grapes onto the trucks. Cody had never driven a large truck with thousands of pounds of fruit on the back. But, as Mark Twain wrote, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." We made sure the grapes were strapped down well and slowly started our descent to the fertile plain of Salinas.
Cody, as usual, executed the task with precision and measured cautiousness. When we got to the 101, I was relieved. No drama. We made it down the mountain, avoiding all tragedies, and were on our way to the winery.
Then, I noticed Cody pull off to the side of the highway.
“The whole truck just went dead and it won’t start up again”
F#@&*% rental trucks!
After some cajoling and cussing, we decided that Cody would take the winery truck and head to the winery to meet Morgan. I would stay with the broken truck and try to figure something out—just hoping that the final answer was not skin-fermented Chardonnay made on the back of a flatbed. I mean, we can get our skinny jeans on with the best of them, but come on…
We were on the clock. If you have never been to Salinas, it is farm country for a reason. It can get warm there, really warm.
After a few hours of frantic phone calls, we found a tow truck. Most importantly, Mother Nature smiled and the fog stayed low and the temperatures stayed cool throughout the day. Somehow, when the fruit finally got to the winery at 7:30 pm, it was still cool to the touch.
So, as you crack your first bottle of 2013 Brosseau Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, you know the first part of the journey.
Alder Springs Vineyard
Alder Springs is a four hour drive from our winery when not driving an underpowered diesel bobtail, so we were up well before the sun. My beautiful Kristen, Morgan, and I squeezed into a cab over flatbed truck bouncing our way north to Alder Springs to pick up fruit. It was early and we were tired but excited to be clocking in and I was excited to show Kristen the vineyard, which is easily one of the most beautiful in the world. When we arrived at daybreak to pick up our grapes, the vineyard manager informed us that she had already arranged trucking and the grapes would be delivered for us. This was a good thing as the vineyard had accidentally picked more fruit than we were contracted for and we would have been way over payload coming down some serious Mendocino grades. Facing another four hours of kidney abuse from a truck whose suspension is the antithesis of a Citroen DS, we certainly could have been a bit “salty.” However, unhappiness is simply not possible on a beautiful morning at Alder Springs.
At three that afternoon, the ten bins of grapes - six Chardonnay and four Pinot Noir—arrived… We knew what to do with the Chardonnay: press it and carefully make several cuts based on a delicate balance of flavor and phenolics while watching pH (pH rises during the press cycle as more potassium is pulled from the skins and stems). However, the Pinot presented a challenge. We initially thought we were going to whole cluster press it, as we had done with the Brosseau Pinot Noir a couple weeks earlier but Brosseau is an entirely different unicorn. It is a site which creates rich wines that demand a light touch—the fruit is intense and beautiful but can cross a line towards excessive hedonism quickly. The Alder Pinot had a powerful current of acidity and incredible flavor packed into its thick skins. It crackled. How do we capture what these grapes taste like?
We pondered. I excitedly waved my arms in the air and yelled “I’m freakin’ out!” a few times in George Costanza-esque fashion. Then Morgan said, “Let’s do Rosé, stomp it, a few hour light skin soak, and then press when we think the color and flavor are there.” I was in. And now, three years later, we are releasing a rosé that is everything we hoped it would be that afternoon.
The wines offered today are the result of a huge collage of tasks and people-- from the vineyard owners and hardworking crews of men and women that farm the vineyards, to cleaning EVERYTHING OVER AND OVER, driving forklifts and trucks, fixing broken stuff, thinking on ones feet, early vineyard mornings and late winery nights, disagreement and collaboration. All in the name of creating something that will hopefully bring other people pleasure. We are absolutely blessed to have the opportunity to work with the people we do and live the diverse and sometimes rancorous lives we do—this is unbelievably fun.
-Chris and Morgan
THE WINES
2013 Brosseau Vineyard Sparkling Pinot Noir, Chalone $45
“I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.” - John Steinbeck
Having worked with Brosseau for five years now, the vineyard’s personality is incredibly clear. Though this is our first Blancs des Noirs-style sparkling wine, Brosseau, like many great vineyards, expresses the site’s character perhaps more strongly than the variety. Though unexpected, the Pinot Noir is the subtler of the two wines from the vineyard. It still has the vineyard’s signature flavors—chili spice, laurel bay and savory granite—but with more red fruit undertones and a suave delivery.
The fruit was put direct to press and fermented in old oak and stainless steel barrels. Malolactic was prevented. It was put down for secondary fermentation in March 2014 and disgorged in March of this year with 4 grams of dosage. Imagine Ambonnay meeting the limestone and granite sun kissed Gabilan Mountains. This wine should age well. If consuming soon, open the wine and let it breathe for a few hours.
“But nowhere within miles of Alder Springs do you see other vineyards, which makes it one of the more unusual vineyards in California, if not the world.” Eric Asimov, New York Times: California Grapes That Flourish in Splendid Isolation
2013 Alder Springs Chardonnay, Mendocino (but really this should be the Stu Bewley AVA) $45
Without people like Stu, we wouldn’t know where the limits of viticulture and wine are. We owe him greatly for being a co-conspirator in testing the limits of what is possible in California. The 2013 Alder Springs was gently pressed and fermented using indigenous yeast in barrel. Malolactic fermentation was prevented and it was put down for secondary in April of 2014. As with all the 2013s, our yeast culture in 2013 changed to a more robust form to get it through secondary fermentation quickly and cleanly (thank you Michael Cruse!). The Chardonnay was disgorged in March with 1 gram of dosage. Green apple and stone fruit with a hint of almost Chablisienne saltwater, reminding me of the vineyard’s proximity to the Pacific. Alder’s acid backbone shimmers. This wine should age well and will benefit from opening and decanting.
2013 Alder Springs Pinot Noir Rose, Bewley AVA $48
The tiny clusters were foot stomped and left to soak in the press for three hours. The grapes were pressed gently and fermented in old oak barrels. Malolactic fermentation was prevented and the wine was put down for secondary in March 2014. We chose to disgorge this wine in January of 2016 with 3 grams of dosage as we wanted to preserve the crunchy and electric fruit–the cranberry, quince, and Morello cherry—rather than soften that explosiveness by allowing more time en tirage. This screams Pinot, this screams Alder, and we wish we had made more!