Yes family! I was lucky enough to buy the 07 on what I think was her first BD and went through a couple of cases of these, sadly I have no restraint so none left but drinking a 12 tonight with some smoked ribs and it’s just another great wine from Emily! I wish her nothing but the best and i’m off to her website to see what’s available 
Hi Guys, Thanks for all the kind words and interest. Thanks Brig for the ping. Ugh, I don’t even know what to tell y’all.
SHORT ANSWER: Maybe 2013 and 2014 reds. MAYBE more rose’ but no idea when.
I’m an open book, so it’s not prying. I’m not being elusive. I never was one to keep up the smoke and mirrors illusions of who I want you to think I am I simply have NO time. Knowing I let so many people down every day is a new feeling for me to manage, and not easy.
It sounds like bs, but as of two weeks ago, I’m up to 5 catastrophic insurance claims in 4 years.
The last two vintages produced of red are still in barrel; every time I get close to bottling, I get blown out. There’s a story that other wineries jump in and help in tough times; it’s VERY rare. Napa Valley is dog eat dog. Sorry, but it’s just true. Especially if you don’t produce a $150 red wine willing to overpay for any help. THANKFULLY, my wines are in a very nice clean cave so these wines are like bottled in the barrel, but something’s gotta give. Every time I think about it I basically want to cry… My priorities are not my own. You can’t ignore real estate that’s wet, smushed, at risk, burned to ash… The work involved to recover insurance is massive.
On the bright side, the second disaster brought a solid insurance adjustor who helped me settle the litigation with the first insurer and has become my bud. He lives in Tennessee and when visiting him, I fell in love with East Nashville, and set a stepping stone for the long-term future, buying a cute renovation project of a historic Italianate brick cottage. I had a long-term plan to sell my condo in San Francisco and look forward to a simpler life in this super cool historic hood, where everyone loves architecture, design, gardening, and great food as much as I do. And I could BECOME ONE OF YOU! Chat up about CONSUMING wine on Berserkers And all my other favorite subjects. Like how the f*** do you retire in CA? Basically you gotta be a .01%er to retire in California or inherit money AND be lucky enough to have a reasonable contractor network (not me!). One day I’ll have an Airbnb studio in Nashville ready for visitors to one VERY fun City. But that’s all a long way off.
Let’s review…
FOUR natural disasters and a one BAD neighbor (sound like a movie?):
–2017 WINDSTORM dropped tree on house, huge lawsuit with insurance, I finally finished restoration when it burned
–2018 FLOODING by absentee cheapskate slumlord in Maryland letting his pipes rot out overhead of my San Francisco condo (massive damage to mine and another unit below all of which I was required to manage), thank God for State Farm
–2020 (Mar), F3 TORNADO half a block from Nashville cottage, destroys homes and most of the Five Points local businesses 
–2020 (Sep), WILDFIRE on my birthday, total loss of home/cellar/office (including…grrrrr…2 cases plus 2mags and 6x375’s of 2007 Virage…arrrgggh) ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD burned with ZERO firefighting, not a drop of water spared on my street, total 70 homes burned in those beautiful foothills of Howell Mtn… If you ask me, they just throw up their hands in CA wildfires if there’s any trees in sight, no effort at all to mitigate damage, house was still burning four days later… Just think a little water could have saved my hillside foundation… They call it a wildfire, but it’s a neighborhood, not wilderness. THIS FIRE STARTED IN A VINEYARD. Vineyard is not wilderness. Vineyards have farming roads. Come to wine country for harvest you’ll see 30 cars parked at a vineyard during harvest. And yes, at 4:30AM, the time we were evacuated. That experience of neglect/disrespect whatever you want to call it, not just toward me but my trusting and longtime neighbors… we all just got out of the way, we were so close to where the fire started and the wind going the other way, but no engines came. Denial is a valuable tool but I’m not good at using that instrument. Realizing that my home was fully abandoned by my City/County/State was so disheartening; WITHOUT YOU GUYS rescuing me with tons of orders last fall, I’d have lost my mind with rage. You, and a 30-minute yoga tape have been my saviors.
Lastly, just two weeks ago:
–2021 HAILSTORM and FLOODING from historic rain trashes East Nashville again!! Made the national news, where I watched it, and video from my new neighbors. Just got a roofer out yesterday finally, he’s buried alive, too. Two more trades to go to assess all the damage for Allstate. Boyfriend has moved in to keep after it for me and handle the contractors. Whew. Cuz he’s also a full-time job, lol.
FIVE, count 'em FIVE huge insurance claims!
All I can say is you don’t want me within a mile of where you live!! I’m a lightning rod lately.
I might walk away from all of it and write a book, cuz there’s dozens of ironic, sad, entertaining, outrageous stories I could have added in here…
ONE WORD OF ADVICE: You buy a forever/retirement home in January, PLEASE no matter how clever you are with financing, do NOT take a bridge loan to wait until Spring to sell your existing house. Do not wait to stain the siding, etc. Anything can happen, pandemic, power shutdowns, fire/smoke, total loss…
Lest I sound like a whiner, it’s just that I’m a planner, but I have only a vague concept of a plan to make a plan. Anything I say sounds elusive. I gotta dig out of the hole. I dunno about future production. Semi-retirement for time to sell the Napa Valley land, and cure all the damage in Nashville, may be all I got for the next couple years. Seven months post-fire, FEMA is finally here, and clearing my lot next week. So many regulations, so slow… So we’ll see if they trash my rocky hillside lot with their excavators or carefully pick around my retaining walls, and leave me something to sell. It’s a gorgeous view, although some dead trees in it these days. Someone will make it wonderful, but that’s not gonna be me. If you’re interested in building a getaway on a view lot with privacy in the foothills, just 4 miles to St. Helena, ping me!
Good Lord, back to WINE Emily.
Maybe I’ll still have enough energy and money to produce more wine. But starting to doubt it. Maybe I’ll produce some dry cider in Tennessee… Or maybe open the Airbnb to pay the bills and do a lot of gardening, reading and walking the dog.
I love Virage the brand and the Right-Bank-Revolution I tried to be a part of, and I’m soooooo proud of the red blends. I feel like I really rang the bell a couple times on the style I love to drink. Love the comparisons to right-bank Bordeaux, and it doesn’t matter which BDX varietals you think are in those bottles! No joke, it REALLY doesn’t matter. We often don’t know–because it’s not important–the blend components of great Bordeaux wines. Agustin Huneeus (Senior) never releases the mix of each vintage. That brand is a part of me, where I learned my perspective along with working for Karen MacNeil for a year… I’ve never written this down before, so if you read this far, here’s your inside information: My 2012 Barrel Select, rated a 94, the most chewy/dense/rich delicious wine ever–although the 2007 still a tad more layered/mineral–is 100% Merlot. And I should have charged more for it. Stunning wine, blew me away. But there’s 6 more barrels of that exact wine in the 2012 blend, too.
The 2010 was embarrassingly big at release, but I’m reading your notes and I agree with you on today’s character: namely, DELISH. 2011 is a sleeper, was tight tight tight but SO WAS THE 2007. When 2007 first released, I would yell at buyers who consume it without 3 hours in decanter or 3 days on the counter…
One of my biggest customers told me years later, Oh, please, we never did that. OK, your loss sistah… Today it’s phenomenal at 15mins in the glass.
If I owned the vineyard… To demonstrate how truly TORTURED I am, there is a property for sale that would be an INCREDIBLE site for Virage. Seriously, the price is right, the soils are right, the location is spectacular for many reasons, not least of all for the character of these blends, and for rose’ production. For sure winner and really special spot, that would not be for everyone… But developing raw land in Napa County with all that’s on my plate, that’s an insane idea. And with what money. And with climate change, I worry about all Emily’s eggs in one basket. I thought about it. I still sometimes dream about it. It’s still for sale, and it’s a once-in-lifetime opportunity with enormous potential for a small brand owner/operator, especially one named Virage. If I had an hour or two, I’d put together some kind of package like I did in my former life in investment banking, but I don’t have a few hours. Which is why I’m never on Berserkers, sadly.
Cuz you all are the best.
I have ~6/7 barrels of two vintages. After next week’s FEMA fun, the barrels get 100% of my attention (barring an earthquake in San Francisco, knock on wood). I gotta decide whether to bottle some (maybe half bottles cuz I love 'em as much as you guys do), sell them to another producer, sell to someone who wants a private label bottling, or SELL EVERYTHING–the brand, the inventory, the wine in barrel and pass the Virage baton. I have financial partners, they’d be thrilled to receive some money.
I’ve always been the girl who just gets.it.done. It’s been very sobering and maybe somewhat liberating to fail so miserably to keep up these past five years. Gotta just look ahead, do daily yoga, strive for good humor, get through each day, and maybe soon there’s light.
Meanwhile, DO NOT PANIC: These wines are evolving every year and so far, all just get better and better, and there’s ~1000 cases in inventory. I’ll never miss a BerserkerDay as long as long as I’m in charge of this inventory. I might put together something irresistable before May if I can to entice some Berserkers to stock up in good shipping weather.
Cheers. I hope I’m soon online more often
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Cheers Emily. Good luck in whatever you choose to do.
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Wow Emily!! I knew some of this but certainly not all. You are an incredibly strong person to go through all that and still be standing. Best of luck and I sincerely hope everything works out for you.
Hang in there Emily…and please bottle some halves .
Hang in there Emily!
When I get some room in my cellar soon we’ll stock up some more – whichever vintages you have available!
Never saw your post, Emily. Wow - I feel you pain and I feel your exhaustion. I can totally empathize. 2020’s harvest almost broke me. I was so exhausted. Made some changes in 2021’s workflow and lineup, to help mitigate and it was a major improvement.
But hope you can continue to make wine! How about just buying some fruit in Napa, and trucking it over in a reefer to TN? Then you can have all the lower cost benefits of TN living/production, fewer natural disasters, but still make CA wines? I do a much smaller version of that by harvesting up north, but trucking it to LA to make it at my winery here. It sucks at times to have to drive for 8hrs straight after an exhausting night harvest, but it sure beats paying Napa or Sonoma winery property prices. Plus - very few natural disasters in an urban areas.
Hey Adam, thanks for your sentiments. I’m digging out of the hole, but dang it’s slow going. Looking forward to another BeserkerDay and being in Napa Valley for a couple months sorting through the rubble and my business options. I like your idea, in theory. Although not finding America’s heartland so low cost after all. I did meet someone who made wine in an urban winery in Chicago with grapes he sourced from Quintessa (so he said). Who knew! So I suppose a reefer railcar could get grapes to TN with minimal damage. Your 8hrs is totally do-able, but 2400 miles?? I’ll be looking into it. I’m thinking about a brand I’d call the Napa-Nashville Line… It might just produce a killer red wine vinegar from my wine in barrels and future bulk sources. Like, a product that, once bottled, is easy to sell/ship over state lines
And if only on fewer natural disasters… Middle Tennessee is where the warm gulf air rises to meet the descending Canadian cold fronts–and all manner of things swirl about. Tho not as rough-and-tumble as Memphis, Nashville is in the whitewater. My little cottage has been hit by tornado and one heck of a horizontal hailstorm. One neighbor joked she could open a bar with the mountain of ice cubes on her porch… they were 1" stones! Life, what an adventure. All I ask is one year, just one please, without a major catastrophe insurance claim. I’ve had FOUR in 5 years. Jeez. Glad I’ll be close to retiring before climate change really takes us all for a spin. If you guys source bulk wine, PM me cuz I have some barrels of good stuff available.
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