December 30, 2024: A Year in Review

As another year comes to a close, we look back on what happened in 2024. Here are a few things to look back on:

Special Events:

  • Fiesta:
    • This was our first year working with Fiesta in San Antonio and we were blown away. The energy in the city was amazing. The events were extremely well planned and executed. The people were amazing. The cause is fantastic. We sold and donated wine to Fiesta events, and our team got to participate in a number of events. We cannot wait for Fiesta to roll around again so that we can be a part of it again.

 

  • Indie Meme Festival:
    • A South Asian film festival in Austin? Sign us up! We donated wine to this fantastic organization for them to use at a few of the events surrounding the film festival. We met so many amazing people, saw some great movies, etc. The really neat thing about this event is that the movies highlight stories that are not common to see in Western culture, and ultimately gives a voice to a population that isn’t seen as much. For instance, we saw a movie about an Indian girl’s coming of age story, which reflected some of the realities Nikhila faced when growing up.
  • Texas Wine Auction:
    • This was the 3rd year of the Texas Wine Auction, and our 3rd year to participate. Through the auction, the foundation raises money to “fund programs that promote healthy communities and strengthen a sustainable future for Texas wines.” One of our team members was able to attend the auction (we had a conflict) and raved about how well the event went again. We’ll be involved in the 2025 auction, and really hope no conflicts pop up this year!
  • CabFranc-A-Palooza:
    • We were invited to pour our Cabernet Franc at this 2nd annual event in Livermore, California. We really did not know what to expect as the event was only in its second year and we did not know anyone that participated the previous year. But we packed our bags and flew to California for the event AND to do some good old R&D (ok when you own a winery sometimes that means going to other wineries to learn about their experiences, winemaking practices, etc.). Honestly the events that CabFranc-A-Palooza comprised blew us away. They were incredibly well run and professional. We had our 2021 Cabernet Franc in the Friday night blind tasting, and then we poured during Sunday’s Grand Tasting. The appreciation the attendees had for wine was impressive. The curiosity of other wineries was great to see. We will again participate in this event in 2025, and we hope we again manage to sneak away for a few days to attend in person. We think our 2022 Cabernet Franc and another 2022 Cabernet Franc focused blend will be a lot of fun to pour – especially for attendees that came in 2024 so they get to see the changes of optical sorting.

Harvest:
Harvest started early, but finished right in line with what we expected. We continue to test out tweaks to our winemaking program and protocol and were happy with changes we made this year. Ultimately this harvest was tiring, but went extremely smoothly without too many hiccups. That’s a win, right? Fruit looked great from the vineyard, and even better after the optical sorter. We were able to pull just about everything we wanted off the vineyard for our program this year, so we’re on track for some fun releases in the Spring (whites & rosé) and in ~18+ months (reds).

Wine Releases:
Over the last 3+ years we have been working toward increasing the number of wines released each year such that our wine club receives more variety. 2021 was a light harvest, so not all the varieties we needed produced sufficient yield to really make that a reality during last year’s releases. As we look back at all of 2024, here’s what we released:

  • 2023 Malvasia Bianca
  • 2023 Sangiovese Rosé
  • 2021 Malbec
  • 2021 Cabernet Franc (1st single varietal release)
  • 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 685 (1st single varietal release)
  • 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 8
  • 2021 Raj Collection (1st release for this collection / label)
  • 2021 Tannat
  • 2022 Teroldego
  • 2022 Sagrantino

We’ve just started releasing our 2022 vintage, as shown above, which should result in 11 red wines being released alongside some 2024 wines: 3 white wines and 1 rosé – so 15 wines released over a 12 month period. The first two reds from our 2022 vintage have now been released, our 2022 Sagrantino, and our 2022 Teroldego. These 2022 wines were both made with optically sorted grapes, marking the release of the very first optically sorted Texas wines. This is a huge milestone for us, and we believe for the Texas wine industry. The optical sorting resulted in very smooth wines as we were able to select the very best, evenly ripe grapes to make into wine.

Wine Ratings:
While there has not been a shortage of media coverage of Texas wine, there has been a lack of one specific form of coverage – wine ratings. This year Jonathan Cristaldi, of Cristaldi & Co., and Jim Gordon, of James Suckling, came down to Fredericksburg to taste and score Texas wines. We were very excited for their visits as they gave us a chance to show the best of Texas wine to critics that taste wine from all around the world, and ultimately can give us a score to compare ourselves to the best from everywhere.

We were fortunate enough to host Jonathan Cristaldi at Kalasi Cellars during his trip. During this visit he was able to taste through a broader set of our portfolio, learn more about our story, hear what we experienced during each growing season, etc. This served as a great learning experience for all of us, as Jonathan shared some of what he’s heard from growers and winemakers in other regions, too.

As for the results of Jonathan’s visit – we couldn’t be more pleased! Every wine released over the last 12 months that he tasted was rated highly.

  • 2021 Raj Collection: 95pts
  • 2022 Teroldego: 94pts
  • 2022 Sagrantino: 94pts
  • 2021 Tannat: 94pts
  • 2018 Kanchi: 94pts
  • 2023 Malvasia Bianca: 91pts
  • 2021 Malbec: 91pts
  • 2023 Sangiovese Rosé: 90pts

We look forward to hosting Jonathan again in the future, and sharing more of our 2022 vintage as we get more wines in bottle, and our 2024 whites and rosé.

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