Our Methods

Each spring 122º West Winery travels to vineyards throughout the entire longitude of 122º West to seek out the finest grapes.  We only work with growers that have a history of producing excellent grapes and farming practices that help ensure consistently high quality.

Once we select which grapes we will use, we wait until just the right moment to make our harvest decision.  Grapes are selected using our brains as the measurement tool.  Sight, smell, color and most importantly taste are the determining factors of when to harvest.  We look for the “wow” factor, and although we don’t know how to describe it, we just know when it's right. 

During harvest the grapes are field sorted and then transported to our winery where they are hand sorted and then de-stemmed.  Unlike large commercial producers, our hand sorting weeds out any grapes that don’t make the cut of physiological ripeness and MOG (material other than grapes).

After de-stemming, the grapes are cold soaked for a few days to enhance the extraction of color and tannins.  When the cold soak is completed, the must is allowed to slightly warm up to kick off fermentation with native vineyard yeasts. This can take anywhere from three to twenty-one days.  The caps are manually punched down between two to four times per day.

After fermentation, the juice is pressed and barreled down.  Our oak program uses high quality new and used French Oak matched to the varietals where they will naturally undergo malolactic fermentation.  We generally age our wines for a shorter period of time to maintain fruit characters.  Once the wines are aged, they are then bottled unfiltered, unfined and then corked for your pleasure.

For the specific methods we use to craft each of our wines, please visit the Our Wines page.