Winemaking

Although the combination of perfect soils and climate are indispensable, it takes the hand of great winemakers to realize a vineyard’s full potential to produce a world-class wine. At SplitRock Vineyard, we have a dedicated team of winemakers with years of experience handcrafting our wines.

There are hundreds of decisions that go into making a bottle of wine and it all begins in the vineyard, with the land. One of the most basic and essential ingredients in growing a great grape is starting with healthy soils. Mother Nature has determined the makeup of all the soil types found on our Estate vineyard, but it is the responsibility of the vineyard team to ensure that these soils are healthy and balanced.

While our vineyards are naturally low-yielding because of their rocky soil types, we help to keep the vine yield low by dry farming as well as thinning our crops each year. Smaller yields produce more intense, concentrated, and complex wines. For the same reason, the vines in each vineyard block are trellised specifically for optimum exposure to the sun and to promote air circulation. At harvest time all of our grapes are hand-picked by our experienced vineyard crew to capture the natural flavors we prefer in our wine.

The wines produced by Splitrock are handcrafted  by our dedicated winemaking team. The wines express the fruit from which they are made and the vintage in which they are grown, with all other elements in balance to complement the fruit. To achieve this goal, we use modern crushing, de-stemming and pressing equipment to process the grapes as gently as possible. We then use temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks to allow the wines to ferment slowly and evenly.  After  bottling, the wines receive enough aging time prior to release so that they can be enjoyed right away or laid down to mature for years to come