Every Season Is a Growing Season

The vines are blooming wildly in our fourth growing season. How did we get here?

Ten years ago I worked at a few local wineries, only to learn how to make beer the desired wrong way. By the time we grew our brewery into its Kutztown, PA forever home that happened to be surrounded by 3.4 ac (1.4ha) of vines, I found I had largely forgotten how to prune. So we relearned, taking the advice of the guyot poussard revivalists and adopting it whenever the vine allows. (Esca has taken probably 80% of the Cabernet Franc planted in our home vineyard, inviting us to focus on pruning for sap flow, soil remediation, massal selections & replanting).

Our inherited vineyard was planted in 1991 (and 1997 and 2001 and 2012, but the 2012 planting was the worst of the esca’d Cab Franc) and was farmed