Winery, Vineyard, or Garage?

Today I was doing business in the quaint town of Healdsburg, towards the northern end of Sonoma County.  Directly across from the office I was visiting was an operation receiving shipments of Nitrogen and Argon gases.  The first business that came to mind that works with both of these gases was winemaking.  Sure enough, as the truck drove off, a large label on the backside read Clos du Bois.  Occupying the adjacent office space to my visit was another winemaking operation, as evident from the wine barrels tucked neatly inside.  I took the opportunity to chat for a moment with the winemaker, who works for (and owns) Roadhouse Winery.  They produce a scant 1,500 to 2,000 cases of Pinot Noir each year.   Inside the warehouse they have constructed an insulated, cooled barrel room (aka cave) that is not apparent from the outside.  They have no dedicated tasting room, but instead offer their wines alongside other brands at a tasting room in downtown Healdsburg.  This is the quintessential Garage Wine, in that it is a small operation that either purchases small lots of grapes or harvests a handful of acres in the area and has no facilities on the vineyard land for processing the grapes once harvested.

This brings up an interesting distinction between a winery and a vineyard.  A winery is a winemaking operation where grapes are processed after harvest.  Processing includes sorting, crushing, fermenting, and aging the wine in barrels or tanks.  The finished product is bottled and labeled, then boxed for resale.  There may also be a tasting room where the winery can offer direct sales.  A vineyard is the land where grapes grow on the vine each year.  Think of this as a grape farm.  Not every vineyard has a winemaking operation.  A number of wineries are situated on vineyards.  Wines produced by the winery from grapes grown on any property owned by the winery are called estate wines.

A number of garage wineries buy their grapes instead of growing them.  Some vineyards produce more grapes than their winemaking operations can process.  Other vineyards sell their grapes to the highest bidder or by contract and produce no wine under the vineyard’s label.  Napa Valley’s famed Beckstoffer To Kalon vineyard in Oakville is a good example of this.  This arrangement allows the winemaker to provide growing objectives to the vineyard without having to monitor the daily operations.  The other model is probably best typified by Charles Shaw wines of Trader Joe’s fame.  These wines are made from the leftover grapes in the vintage.  In a good year, there are more good grapes than can be made into fine wine that winemakers are able to bottle, and so the excess juice gets sold off.  This in turn improves the quality of the wines made from the excess grape juice on the market.  In an off vintage, you are taking more of a chance with these cheaper wines.