WINTER 2020 RELEASE

After navigating a year of uneasy seas, we feel lucky and blessed to be soon arriving at the ‘festive season.’ A time when after the annual adventures of harvest, we come back to our families, community, and to ourselves in a way. Certainly, the realities of the homecoming may look different this year, but the spirit remains the same.

Our Winter 2020 Edition Lager is all about symbiosis. I’ve always believed in the power of cross-disciplinary endeavors, and this beer feels like one of them. Before I was a winemaker, I was a brewer in Northwest Washington State. There I learned the importance of judiciously applied precision with respect to cellar practices and fermentation.

Beyond the brewery, my wife Jennifer and I also brewed non-commercially for community fundraising events, and a great variety of other community celebrations in the Pacific Northwest. We carried these brewing skills with us into subsequent careers in winemaking, developing them further during travelling winemaking stints in New Zealand, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Oregon, Washington, and California.

In winemaking, we developed a much deeper understanding of yeast behavior, and in general, how to shepherd the course of fermentation and age on lees to develop a pleasurable balance of tension and richness. Coming full circle, we’re bringing these (mostly white winemaking) cellar techniques to our lager brewing approach.

We feel there is tremendous opportunity to innovate in the boundary zones, and in this specialist world, we feel fortunate to be generalist farmers and winemakers, encouraging everybody to indulge in those side-projects that have occupied your thoughts in the wee hours… We strongly believe in the magic of cross-pollination.

This batch is a very special Bohemian Style Pilsner, a lager beer that we brewed with Czech barley malt from a traditional floor-malting facility there, which underwent extended lees contact during a long, cold fermentation to develop texture and depth, a beer that balances richness and hay-like, grainy, and minty aromatics with freshness and verve.

We look forward to sharing our winemaker’s take on traditional lager brewing with you.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.