Holiday and Winter Hours

The holiday season is here and we invite you to raise a glass with us!

 Winter Hours beginning December 1st

 Wednesday – Monday 11:00 a.m- 5:00 p.m.

 Closed Tuesday

Holidays Hours
Christmas Eve – Closed
Christmas Day – Closed
New Years Eve – Close at 3:00 p.m
New Years Day – Closed.

Cheers to a wonderful holiday season!

Vertical Wine Tasting and Vineyard Tour Experience

Introducing our Private Vertical Tasting and Vineyard Tour Experience

 

Our vertical tasting experience begins with a short historical vineyard tour through some of our oldest Chardonnay plantings on the estate from 1964. This tour, hosted by one of the Bacigalupi family members, will give you a glimpse back in history documenting 55 years of premium grape growing in the Russian River Valley.  After the tour, relish in a private vertical tasting on our outdoor patio with an offering of six wines, available only through the tasting room. Enjoy a selection of cheeses and chocolates thoughtfully paired with our wines.

By appointment only Friday- Sunday. Seatings begin at 11:00, 12:30, 2:00 and 3:30.  Maximum of 8 guest seatings available. $25 per person. Club members enjoy two for one pricing, one per membership.

 

Contact

To schedule a visit please contact our tasting room at 707-473-0115 or by email at tastingroom@johntylerwines.com.

 

Cancellation Policy

Credit card number is required to hold the reservation. 24 hour cancellation policy.

Visit us!

John Tyler Wines & Bacigalupi Vineyards invite you to join us at our new tasting room on Westside Road in Healdsburg. After over 3 years of planning and construction we are finally ready to open our doors!
Come taste our estate vineyard designate wines while enjoying the beautiful Russian RiverValley. Open daily from 10:30 – 5:00.  Contact us at 707-473-0115. Located at 4353 Westside Rd Healdsburg, Ca 95448

Find us on Google Maps

Character from the ground up

Tyler Heck is Russian River Valley’s “Character from the ground up” in Wine Spectator’s July issue.  RRV is its own character due to its unique combination of artisan wine with great character made by people with unique characters. Growing up Tyler played the saxophone and guitar as well as today making some of the finest Pinot Noir and Zinfandel in the valley. The eclectic nature of the people who grow the grapes and make the wine truly sets this region apart from the others.  See the ad Wine Spectator July 2011

Preferred Sonoma Wine Country Day Trips

Check out the newest publication of Wine Country this Week,  ”Preferred Sonoma Wine Country Day Trips off Highway 101“. John Tyler Wines is featured as a recommended day trip to take if you are traveling down Westside Road. Westside Road is, quite literally, one of the most recommended routes to take for wine tasting in this Russian River Valley AVA.  Westside Road is slow and winding, filled with redwood trees, heritage oaks with moss beards and famous vineyards.  Should you wish to slow down and experience wine country up-close-and-personal, Westside Road is your road. Open by appointment, please call 707-473-0123 to schedule a tasting with us. Click here to read full article.

New release ~ 2006 Zinfandel

As both growers and vintners we hold a special place on our hearts for the Zinfandel grape, a justly celebrated and prominent variety in Sonoma County. Our 2006 Zinfandel features a rich texture with lush flavors centered on a core of bright cherry fruit, accented with herbal notes and subtle spice. Allowed time to mature in the bottle, this highly structured, balanced Zinfandel will evolve into a supple, beautiful wine. If properly cellared should give drinking pleasure now through 2018.

Vineyard Location: Bacigalupi Vineyards– Russian River Valley Appellation
Climate: cool mornings and warm afternoons
Soil: Rocky volcanic and sandy loam

Harvest Information
Date: Sunrise; September 23, 2006
Lot: 6 tons
Duprat clone

The 2006 growing season was characterized by weather extremes and a larger than normal crop load. The unusually cool and wet weather in early spring caused a late start to the harvest. Prolonged and excessive July heat spikes were followed by cooler coastal weather in August, permitting a long hang time for optimal fruit maturity.

Production Notes     
Barrels: 19
Cases produced: 467
Price: $36.00
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Hello from Margaret River!

Hello from Margaret River, Australia! Finishing up my second week working vintage at McHenry  I can definitely say that it is a lot more difficult than I had expected when I originally thought up this adventure. With this being my first harvest working in the cellar I have such a better understanding of the amount of work that goes into producing a bottle of wine. On top of that I now have the utmost respect for women working in the industry especially if they have done what I have in the past few weeks. Physically, cellar work is no joke. I have lost 3 pounds since starting work and I expect I’ll lose more by the end of this vintage. Lugging hoses, fermentation rounds, stirring barrels, inoculating tanks, sampling, and running lab analysis are just some of the jobs that I have been doing.

Ryan Walsh is the winemaker and although he is young, I can tell he has a lot of experience and an incredible, innate passion for wine. He is one of those winemakers who has literally slept on a couch overnight in the cellar to keep tabs on a tank. Ryan prefers to approach winemaking in the very “hands off” sense so there is virtually no interference with the natural process of making wine. We crush the fruit, put it into tank, run some initial numbers, decide to either inoculate or use wild yeasts and let the baby go so to speak. A lot of our work is watching, running numbers and sort of baby sitting if you will the wines progress. We do weekly tastings of the barrels and tanks then Ryan decides what will be blended with what or stay as single vineyard. Since the winery is small and family run he has a lot of freedom in deciding what he will make for the year. With how much a vintage can differ from year to year, being flexible with blends help to strengthen the wines overall. I feel privileged to work with David Hohnen, co-owner of McHenry Hohnen and founder of Cape Mentelle, one of Margaret River’s first wineries started in 1970. David sold Cape Mentelle and now pursues other interest including the Farm Shop that doubles as a McHenry Hohnens Cellar Door as well as selling meat from his farms. He raises about 1200 sheep and is also involved in the winemaking process at the winery.

 Margaret River as a whole reminds me a lot of Healdsburg in many ways. It is a big tourist spot for the wineries, quaint downtown area and its beautiful beaches. There is one real local bar called Settlers Tavern with live music and a great variety of beer- very much like the Bear Republic. Karrindale is probably one of my favorite places I have been to so far. The forest area looks like something out of a dream or fairytale land. It is a signature Margaret River spot. The beaches are absolutely amazing. White and sandy, clear warm water and perfect for a variety of water sports, especially surfing and wind surfing. This area is also known for its extensive caves. Last week I visited Jewel Cave which was just recently discovered in the 1970′s but dates back almost one million years ago.

A little break for the weekend and then it is back to the grid on Monday when we bring in our first lot of red grapes; Merlot. The last day that our whites came in I worked a 14 hour day, and it was the longest day of my life so I am anxious to see what the next few weeks bring and am looking forward to getting my hands purple!

Exclusive Holiday Gift Box Set Now Avaliable

John Tyler Wines and the Bacigalupi Family has selected a few collectible wines they would like to share with you this holiday season.

From vine to hand to bottle; the truth about hand harvesting

Gloves- check, head lamp- check, multiple layers- check. Its nearing 12 am and I am on my way out the door to start my day, or night rather of picking. Hand harvesting is by far most meticulous and pain staking way to harvest grapes, however it is also a great way to get an idea of the what the crop looks like. Quality control is huge here as each grape cluster goes through several different hands even before reaching the winery and is likely sorted an additional time.
The process of preparing for hand harvesting begins several months before hand. Our standard farming protocol is performed; shoot suckering, canopy leafing, weak shoot fruit removal, and verasion thinning. Most of the members of our picking crew have been with us for many years. They are well trained in identifying ripe, good, clean clusters and will pick through them, leaving poor quality ones on the vine. The clusters are carefully examined by several leaf pullers who stand at the bin and are responsible for pulling all the MOG (Matter Other than Grapes) out of the bins. This job can be full of surprises as you never know what will be thrown in the bin along with the grapes; mice, frogs, caterpillars and even the occasional baby snake as they like to hide in the vineyards and eat the insects.

We make sure to not overload the crew according to each varietal and each lot that needs to be harvested. We move slow and steady through each row which is why hand harvesting takes much longer than machine picking but it also gives us the ability to pay more attention to the details. Probably the most common question I get asked is why do you harvest at night? Harvesting at night benefits both the grapes and employees. It’s beneficial to bring in the fruit to the winery as cold as possible. It stabilizes the sugar and make the berries more resilient to early breakage which means you get more free run juice, the highest quality juice when you crush at the winery. The fruit is fresher and the stems are stiffer and easier to cut. In addition it is better for the workers as conditions are cooler and much more manageable.  Hand harvesting may seem traditional or behind the times. Technology being what it is these days everything seems to be moving at high speed, but when it comes to quality, nothing beats doing things by hand. Its like the saying goes, “many hands make light work.”

Better Late Than Never ~ Details From The 2010 Harvest

      The 2010 vintage experienced some of the most unusual weather patterns of the past decade. Whether it was the abnormally cool summer, the unexpected heat wave or the surprising Indian summer that came in late September, 2010 was a year for the record books. Everywhere you went in our little town of Healdsburg the subject matter seemed to be the weather and how incredibly late harvest was this year. June, July and August were cool and foggy for the most part, but the grapes continued to ripen slowly, taking on color and flavor. A severe heat wave in the third week of August caused some sunburn, but more importantly gave a jump start to ripening. Only a few days in August reached the 100 degree mark making 2010 one of 5 coolest summers on record. Unseasonably cool weather can be one of the main causes of concern for growers of any agricultural product. It really puts in perspective how sensitive this industry is to Mother Nature and the weather vane.
      Rain was predicted for the third week in September which eventually fizzled out for the most part and measured about .02 inches in Sonoma County. By later on in the week temperatures were in the low 80’s and the impact of the rain was quickly behind us. We saw good ripening in all the vineyards and a fall heat wave at the end of September that helped to push the grapes along to maturity. We finally picked our Pommard Pinot Noir the first week of October, sugar levels were at a balanced 25 degrees brix and acid levels were looking good as well. At this point we are patiently waiting for the Zinfandel and Petite Sirah to ripen up and expect to have those lots in by mid-October, just in time for Halloween!

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