Virtual Tastings Now Live!

We're excited to officially launch our Virtual Tasting Series!

During this time of turbulence, it's nice to sit back with a glass of wine and feel normal for a bit.  With that in mind, we've put together a few packages to allow you to do just that.  Our Virtual Tasting packages are designed to give you a glimpse into the Notre Vue & Balverne wines YOU find most interesting.

Our options include:

Shades of Red

Our reds package. This box includes a bottle each of our 2019 Balverne Rose of Pinot Noir, 2018 Balverne Reserve Pinot Noir, and our 2017 Notre Vue Proprietor's Red Blend.

Whites & Bubbles

As you might guess, this is all whites & bubbles!  A package to get you through the coming warm months, this box will include a bottle each of our Notre Vue Non-Vintage Brut Sparkling, 2018 Balverne Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, and our 2017 Balverne Chardonnay.

Mixed Bag

An overview of the Balverne brand, this package includes a bottle each of 2018 Balverne Reserve Sauvignon Blanc, our 2017 Balverne Chardonnay, and our 2018 Balverne Reserve Pinot Noir.

All of our packages are reasonably priced and the shipping is only $5 per box!  Additionally, the first 10 orders placed will receive a complimentary Eau de Vie Tasting here at Notre Vue Estate after Shelter-In-Place has ended!  That's right, join us digitally and we'll reward you with the real thing as soon as we're able.

Stay Healthy,

The Notre Vue Crew

Apr 13, 2020 at 4:57 PM Permalink

Curbside Pick-up

Dear Friends,

By now you've probably seen that our tasting room is closed, and while you may not be able to come to us we are certainly more than willing and able to come to you! That's why through the end of Sonoma County's "Shelter-in-Place" we're including local delivery for our surrounding communities. 

That's right, for the communities of Santa Rosa, Windsor, Healdsburg, and Sebastopol, orders of 6 bottles or more will include "curbside" delivery!  For our part, we are respecting current "social distancing" etiquette and are following all of the other recommended precautions.  When your wine arrives, it will be as clean as possible! To arrange for curbside delivery, please place your order by emailing Jared at jared@notrevueestate.com.  Once your wine has been delivered, we recommend having a glass on the back patio and enjoying one anothers company during this brief pause from our daily routines. 

In case you'd like to get out for some fresh air, we're also offering "curbside" pick-up options.  You can place your order either through our website or through Cellarpass and we'll have your order ready for you in half an hour.  Then just swing by and one of us will happily bring your wine out to you!

Mar 25, 2020 at 3:09 PM Permalink

Notre Vue Spring Newsletter

Mar 26, 2019 at 10:00 AM Permalink

Thanksgiving Notre Vue Style

Harvest is finally over and Thanksgiving is coming up quickly.  Those of you that follow my blogs will recall that I wrote about “2018 - The Perfect Vintage?” earlier this year.  As it turns out, it was exactly that!  One of my cellar hands declared this year’s Pinot Noir to be the “best I’ve ever tasted off this property!”  And you know something?  He’s spot on.  It was a perfect vintage and for that we have a lot to celebrate.

And celebrate we will!  I’m starting off our Thanksgiving festivities with a Monterey Jack and Goat Cheese Melt with a Roasted Poblano Sauce served with blue tortilla chips and toasted slices of sourdough baguette.  The accompanying sipper has to be Balverne’s Sauvignon Blanc, of course.  The incredible fruit of this wine, along with the nice acidity, makes it a perfect pairing for this zesty cheese appetizer.

 I am opening dinner with Shrimp Tamales and Garlic Corn Cream Sauce.  Rich and flavorful, this needs a wine with some richness of its own and some good acidity and Balverne’s Chardonnay is the perfect match!  The delicate pear/apple notes of the wine and toasty vanilla notes from the oak barrel aging pop the shrimp and corn masa flavors while the acidity of the wine works wonders with the garlic corn cream.

Gotta have pumpkin on Thanksgiving so next is a Pumpkin Soup spiced up with a dash of chipotle purée.  Wine?  Just keep working with the Chardonnay.  You’ll be stunned!

For the main course I’ve opted for a Barbequed Orange-Garlic Cornish Game Hen with a Cranberry-Mango Sauce paired with Balverne’s 2015 Reserve Pinot Noir, an exquisite wine.  Such a great pairing, you simply have to try it for yourself!

Given we’ve already incorporated the requisite pumpkin into the menu, dessert focuses on warm chocolate cakes with dulce de leche centers.  Decadent, I know.  And what a pairing for the Notre Vue Bordeaux blend or Notre Vue’s Rhône blend.  Simply heaven!

Whatever’s on your menu this year, there is a Notre Vue and Balverne wine for every step of the way. 

From all of us at Notre Vue Estate Winery, best wishes
 for a very Happy Thanksgiving!

(Source: Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill cookbook.)

Nov 19, 2018 at 4:00 PM Permalink

Harvest Winemaker's Dinner Photo Gallery

We held our first Winemaker's Dinner on September 15th at our newly completed Block 23 Terrace. We proudly served our award-winning wines, which were perfectly paired with food by The Cook and the Drummer; a good time was had by all!

The view from the Block 23 Terrace is spectacular and is now available for your enjoyment to host your own special occasion, or to be a part of one of our many upcoming events. You can view photos from the evening in our online photo gallery.

Oct 29, 2018 at 10:54 AM Permalink

Notre Vue Fall Newsletter

Oct 20, 2018 at 1:57 PM Permalink

The Perfect Vintage?

As a winemaker I would never, ever suggest, just one week into harvest, that this might be a “perfect vintage.”  Why jinx it?  Why take the risk of inviting Mother Nature’s wrath so early on when we have so many weeks to go?

So, I won’t.  However . . .

We have both lots of Sauvignon Blanc in the barn.  Perfect numbers.  Our first Pinot Noir came in today and I was just handed the lab report for the lot.  Perfect numbers. 

By “perfect numbers” I mean the sugar and acid content are ideal for making stellar, well-balanced wine with minimal winemaker intervention.  We won’t have to adjust the sugar or the acid and that’s a good thing.  Natural is always preferred over making any sort of add or adjustment.  Perfect.

And the weather?  The forecast is for excellent ripening weather over the next few days then a bit of a cool down that will slow sugar development but will allow flavors to continue to mature.  Sunny and dry.  Perfect.

Yet I am petrified!  How long can “perfect” continue?  I’m hoping for about another eight weeks.  That’s all I ask.  But that is a long time this time of year.  There is no reason a heat wave won’t hit us in the near future.  The riper fruit gets the more susceptible it is to damage by extreme heat.  So, no heat wave, please.  Or, heaven forbid, we should get some rain.  Ripe fruit, with softer skins, is very susceptible to damage by mold.  And mold thrives in moist, damp air.  So, no rain, please.  Just perfect.  That’s all I ask.

 This is the life of a winemaker.  Faced with perfect conditions for the foreseeable future, here I sit worrying.  I’m trying not to think about the weather, though I did just check the forecast again minutes ago, for the nth time today.  And its only 10 AM.

The good thing is that, whatever comes our way, I’m ready and that does take the edge off things a bit.  This is my thirtieth harvest.  If I don’t know how to handle a little adversity by now, there is no hope for me as a winemaker.  I keep thinking about the Farmer’s Insurance commercial “We know a thing or two ‘cause we’ve seen a thing or two.”  So true.  I’m ready for anything.  I hope.

The perfect vintage?  Could be.  Too early to tell but things are looking mighty good out there right now.  Though this winemaker, for one, will not ever say that.  Not now.  Nope. No way.

Sep 24, 2018 at 11:33 AM Permalink

Attention: All Balverne Sauvignon Blanc Fans

Harvest 2018 is underway!  The first of our Balverne Sauvignon Blanc grapes came in this morning in stunning fashion.  We’ve had a beautiful growing season to date with just a bit of a cool snap for the last week or so.  While sugars might not accumulate rapidly in the cooler weather, the flavors do continue developing, the result being that I found this year’s Sauvignon Blanc ready to harvest at lower Brix levels (sugar content) than usual. 

Why is this good?  Because it translates to lower alcohols in the finished wines.  You may have heard the adage that “wine grapes benefit from a long hang time.”  That means the longer the grapes hang on the vine, the greater the chance flavors will be more concentrated in the fruit at harvest, resulting in a more flavorful wine.  While we’re blessed in California with beautiful, warm summers, the heat can sometimes be a little too much of a good thing making sugar accumulation (and therefore potential alcohol levels) run ahead of flavor development.  The ideal situation, obviously, is to have maximum flavor development just as the grapes reach that magical sugar content.

For me as a winemaker, a lower alcohol is important as it helps keep the wine “in balance.”  Put another way, a wine with an excessively high alcohol will taste “hot” or have an alcohol “bite” to it that may not be pleasing, and that higher alcohol may mask some of the more delicate fruity and floral notes of a wine.  Sauvignon Blanc, known for its lighter body and bright, crisp fruit aromas and flavors, most definitely benefits from these lower alcohol levels.   

Sep 11, 2018 at 5:17 PM Permalink

Bottling - A Necessary Evil

At least once a year a winery is faced with the challenge of bottling its wine as it is pretty hard to sell it otherwise.  Admittedly this should not be a big deal and generally it isn’t.  But bottling is not without its inherent pains and worries.  Its not a part of winemaking that any winemaker enjoys.  Or is it?

As we gear up to bottle our Balverne Chardonnay and Pinot Noir here at Notre Vue this fall, we’re attending to lots of little details and making sure everything is in place for a successful bottling run.  We have our labels, corks and capsules.  Glass supposedly arrives next week.  We are scheduled to bottle just after the glass arrives.  All this is carefully choreographed so that everything comes together perfectly and all on time.

We need to make sure the wine is ready, too.  Following any final blending we will address the acidity along with the level of residual sugar and adjust each as necessary.  The wines will be cold stabilized to prevent them from throwing tartrate crystals and will be heat stabilized to prevent protein hazes from developing.  Fining might be done to soften tannins and/or to remove bitter components from the wine.  One last decision to be made will be whether or not to filter.

Once the wine is ready and the materials arrive, its time to bottle.  Again, this should be pretty straight-forward.  How complicated can it be?  You fill a bottle, cork it, label it and pack it away, right?  Well, yes, that is the ideal scenario.  But what if the wine is too cold and moisture is condensing on the outside of the bottle such that the labels won’t stick?  What if we’re under- or over-filling bottles?  What if the labeler is not cooperating and your margins are off meaning the labels are not centered?  Or the labeler is skipping every third bottle?  Or the filler is skipping every third bottle?  Or some bottles are missing capsules?  Or the wrong labels are being used?  Or the filter fails?  I could go on and on but you get the idea.  “Best laid plans, yada, yada, yada!”

But once this necessary evil is complete, however challenging it might have been, the bottling line cleaned up and the exhausted crew headed home, you sit at your desk finishing up paperwork and look up at a few samples of the day’s bottlings each with perfect capsules, straight labels and all filled with delicious wine ready for wine lovers everywhere . . . life is suddenly all good again.  Grab a bottle . . . I think you’ll agree!

Sep 5, 2018 at 1:14 PM Permalink

Got Grapes?

Benjamin Franklin once wrote “ . . . nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  Let me amend that statement to read “Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes and HARVEST!”

Here we go again, kids!  We’re gearing up for Harvest 2018 and I suspect we will have grapes rolling in in just a few weeks.  It seems like I just finished writing a blog about Harvest 2017 . . . how time flies when you’re having fun!

Always a great time of year for a winemaker, harvest brings long days and hard work for sure, but it also brings a new beginning, a new start, a chance to try the latest and greatest ideas, a chance to make yet again another great wine.  There is excitement in the air like no other time of year.

 Its sort of ironic because, as I said, with harvest comes long, tiring, never-ending days.  There is no question that it is exhausting, yet everyone here can’t wait for it to start!  Every day people are asking me “When do you think you’ll start?  How are things looking?  What looks the best this year?” 

The crush pad is set up and ready.  Must lines, pumps and hoses are being cleaned and sanitized.  The press has been checked.  We’re stocking up on yeast and making sure the lab is prepped.  Interns are getting last minute instructions on how things will roll, what their duties are and how to do everything we’ll need to do. 

I love this time of year not only for the winemaking opportunities but also because it offers me another chance to excite a new group of young people contemplating making a career of winemaking as I did.  This is a time for me to pass on my experiences, to teach them the tricks of the trade and to get them excited about what we’re doing each day.  You can always tell which of the interns each year might go on to become winemakers.  They are the ones that never mention being tired, always show up early, are eager to stay to the very end, never complain about being cold, hot, wet, hungry, exhausted.  Always smiling, always the first to greet me saying “You gotta try Tank 324 this morning!  That stuff is liquid gold!” 

And all of you reading this blog, all our Notre Vue and Balverne fans out there, this is your chance, too, to get involved, to get excited about harvest.  Being a smaller operation, I have the time to welcome you to the winery personally and to guide you through the activities of the day.  This is your once-a-year chance to taste harvest-ready grapes, to see us crushing fruit, making juice, filling barrels and to taste the juice and fermenting wines.  Don’t pass it up!  We’d love to have you visit the winery, be part of harvest and to stay for a tasting of our current releases.  See ya soon ??

Aug 30, 2018 at 1:30 PM Permalink