Spring is Springing

March 23, 2021

It’s a very busy time here Oak Creek Vineyards & Winery! Our grapes are waking from their winter nap; our team is preparing for a busy grape-growing season; we are continuing to make big improvements around the vineyard, and we are all finally shedding our yearlong COVID-19 inspired hibernation.


With the spring weather ranging from heavy frost and snow overnight to balmy shirtsleeves weather during the day we are anxious for the safety of our buds. We look forward to bud break any day, and alternately fear the buds will be damaged by freezing temperatures.

A major goal for us this year is to increase the productivity of our vineyards. One of the most important pieces of our plan is to establish the distinct nature of our own wines developed from the grapes grown on our property. To lead that effort, we have brought on a new vineyard manager. Dave has taken the challenge to get our vineyards producing so we can produce reasonable quantities of wine for us to share with you, our biggest fans.


We have been making regular inspections of the vines looking for signs of life. We expect bud break to occur any time in the next few days. The buds are fuzzy and expanding but have not yet broken. But we know it will be soon now that pests have returned to the vineyard. Weeds are growing, and insects are swarming. We are taking steps to control them while we continue to walk softly on our land. As I said to Dave the other day, “We would rather pull than poison” the weeds.

As some of you will have noticed or read about, we are installing a new well. This should give us a reliable water source for irrigating and supplying water to the tasting room, winery and residences. We had several occasions last year where we could not water the grapes nearly enough and we lost several almond trees. That definitely affected our grape production. We expect the new well to come online in the next couple of weeks, just in time for spring watering. We will do more rain-dancing in the meantime.


As we improve the availability of water, we are redesigning the plumbing and replacing many of the irrigation pipes to improve delivery of water to the grapes. We want to be able to tune the irrigation to specific parts of the vineyard to optimize watering. We have several different soil types and sun exposures, even varying row by row. This sometimes means we waste water in some places in order to get enough water to thirsty plants in other rows. So we are working to ensure we give each plant the amount of water it needs and no more.


Developing the vineyard to realize its potential is a long-term project. A journey of 100 miles starts with the first step. Watch for pictures on our social media sites and be prepared to celebrate the start of another vintage!


Salut!

- Nathalie & Gary

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Our 2021 Estate Wines!

May 3, 2023
We’ve released our 2021 Barbera to Club Members as an Estate Wine for the first time. You may recall our 2020 Barbera from this time last year. It was truly delicious and we are very proud of it. But even though it was made from the same grape from the same vineyard, it was not an Estate Bottled wine. For those who are interested, I explain below. Rest assured, this Barbera is amazing. Our Club Members are also enjoying, for the first time, our 2021 Estate Bottled Merlot! This wine has been a labor of love and determination here at Oak Creek. Great respect to Adam and his team in the winery for this spectacular wine. As many of you know, our vineyard has had some trying times in the last few years. These grapes grows at the top of the vineyard, exposed to the worst that mother nature can throw at them: wind, frost, drought, birds, rodents, terrible (for Merlot) soils! Over the last 3 years, we have completely rebuilt the irrigation, re-established proper organic fertilizers and pest controls, and are rebuilding the soils to be more resistant to drought and pests. This is our first, and we hope the beginning of many, vintages of amazing Merlots from our very own vineyards.

Award Winning Wines!

February 1, 2023
We are so proud to officially have award winning wines here at Oak creek Vineyards & Winery! We recently participated in two separate international wine competitions. The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and The San Diego International Wine and Spirits Challenge. These are easily two of the most highly regarded and competitive events in the wine industry, with hundreds of wineries submitting wines from across the globe. Any level of recognition is definitely a feather in the cap of the wineries participating. That being said, we submitted our 2021 Select Sauvignon Blanc and our 2021 Sangiovese. The results were as follows. 

Earth Day 2021

April 21, 2021
This is the 51st Earth Day. The mission of Earth Day has always been to mobilize civil action to protect and restore our environment. You can read more about Earth Day 2021 here . To me Earth Day reflects the ability of people to collectively engage to change the course of human impact. As humans, our sheer numbers imply that we will change the earth’s environment in many ways. We must adapt the way we live to minimize the damage we do every day by focusing on living and working in sustainable ways. That is part of our Mission here at Oak Creek Vineyards & Winery. We are building a sustainable business that our families, neighbors, employees, members and customers are proud to be associated with for years to come. For our business to be sustainable it must be productive, and we will take actions necessary to keep our employees employed and our customers satisfied while at the same time finding more cost-effective ways to reduce the resources we consume and limiting damaging wastes we create.  There are many challenges, but, taking a lesson from Earth Day by being focused and consistent and working together we can achieve these goals.

The First Year

February 21, 2021
It is amazing to note that Nathalie and I have now owned Oak Creek Vineyards & Winery for a whole year! It has been a year of challenges and opportunities, successes and lessons. It has also been a year of development of our plans that make us so excited about the upcoming years. I wish to take the opportunity of our anniversary to share what you can expect over the next year.  Obviously, we will never think about 2020 without thinking about the challenges of COVID-19. We were open only three weeks before having to close. We thank our staff and our customers for being patient with us and keeping us all safe. We were also challenged by the weather. Again, this year we had negligible monsoon rains coupled with very high temperatures. Our winter rains have been disappointing so far but maybe over the next couple of weeks we will see some relief. We hope for more cooperation from Mother Nature this year!

We Bought a Vineyard!

March 23, 2020
On February 24th, 2020, we took ownership of Oak Creek Vineyards and Winery. We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves and let you know what we have in mind for the future of our new home. We are recent transplants to Arizona, having moved to Scottsdale to follow Nathalie’s career in Human Resources at a local software company. We have just celebrated 2 years in the Valley of the Sun. We lived for several years in another valley, Silicon Valley, on the doorstep of wine country and developed a love for the small, local, family-owned wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, and Sonoma County. It is through our appreciation for the passion of these craftspeople that our own dreams evolved.