Only Time Will Tell

Another vintage bottled, laid down, and handed over to time.

Bottling Concerto is always an exciting but very stressful day. Concerto spends the first 6 months of its life being grown in the vineyard. The work we do in this 6 month span is without a doubt the most impactful on the wine. Our only goal during this period is to grow high quality fruit. Without great ingredients, you can’t make a great wine. Once the fruit hits the crush pad, the potential is capped. I don’t look at winemaking as “what can I do in the cellar to make this wine better”. Instead I ask, “what needs to be done in order for the wine to reach its potential; and what should I do to not screw this up”. 

That being said, bottling day is the last step towards ushering the wine safely into bottle; and also the last opportunity to screw up the last 2 years of work. Slow in the cellar, fast in the vineyard is our working motto.

Once those bottles make it back to the cellar, I always breathe a sigh of relief. We’re officially empty nesters. The kids are out of the house for good, and we can rest easy knowing that we did our best in raising them. Let’s hope they age gracefully. 

Starting with the 2022 vintage of Concerto, we started building our “wine library”. Depending on the vintage, we will hold anywhere from 5-10% of volume of Concerto and store it in our cellar laying down, totally undisturbed. The idea is to continue building a library that spans decades. Building an extensive library is the only way we can share 10 and 20 year old bottles of Concerto with our members 10 to 20 years from now. 

Our library will also allow us to connect to the future generations and stewards that we may never meet. It’s a way to create tradition, build a legacy, and honor everybody’s work. It’s a way to taste the evolution of Catoctin Breeze. How cool would it be to open a 100 year old Magnum of 2024 Concerto? I’ll never know, but I hope somebody will. Will it still be any good? Only time will tell.