Sure, you can drink wine you bought from a store like everyone else, or you could help make your own and impress your friends and family with your amazing winemaking skills. If you’d opt for the latter (and why wouldn’t you?), The Wine Foundry (TWF) in Sonoma has all the tools you’ll need to turn grapes into, well…something a little more enjoyable for adults.
Inside their winery walls, clients get to be a part of TWF’s process by doing anything from sorting, punchdowns and pressing, to private blending sessions. The winery also utilizes some of the most state-of-the-art equipment in its temperature and humidity-controlled barrel room, in-house lab, cold room and bottling spaces. Here’s how it all works:
Pick
First you have to start with one of the most important parts of a great wine, its fruit. California has some of the best vineyards in the U.S. and TWF offers selections from the most prestigious vineyards in the state for your choosing. Their Vineyard Catalog has all the options conveniently listed along with descriptions of different wineries. But if you’d rather trust the professionals to the job, enlist a guide to pick the best combinations for your desired tastes and style.
Crush
Once the grapes arrive at their doorstep, it’s time to get your hands dirty by sorting, crushing, punching down, or pressing the fruit. Based on your custom wine plan, it’ll then be moved to a barrel to begin the fermenting process.
Blend
Now’s the time to add some finishing touches to influences its taste profile, determining its shape over the coming years. To make things a little bit easier, their expert team will help you figure out what unique blend you’d like to create, its shape balance, flavors and texture.
Design
Since this bottle will represent you, it needs a label that is purely you and on that will symbolize the kind of wine you worked hard to create. Capturing this journey, you’ll be able to choose just the right glass, cork, and label to tell the story of your wine. And TWF’s packaging and design team will be right by your side.
Bottle
When your blend is finally ready to be bottled, you can be jump on the bottling line with their team and watch it go from barrel to bottle. Then, you celebrate, you’re done! Pop open your very own custom-design wine and watch as your loved ones take their first sip. If it’s so good that you want to start selling it, you can also participate in a Commerce Program to market it for commercial sale.
During the whole process, you’ll be able to stop in from time to time to check up on your creation if you’d like. In the meantime, The Wine Foundry also sells ultra-premium varietals from over 80 commercial brands in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Santa Barbara counties. For events and special occasions, buyers can also choose to put their own custom labels on bottles. To get your own barrel started contact The Wine Foundry. Now, who's thirsty?
