Climate Change and Bottling

This week we bottled Linden’s 2020 red wines. This was a good five months earlier than our typical bottling regime for red wines. Vintage 2020’s weather produced wines with refreshing, crunchy red fruit and acidity. We felt that additional barrel aging would muddle the purity of the wines. So it was decided to bottle early.

Climate change is bringing more vintage variability. It is now becoming clear that we can no longer rely on our systematic, time proven winemaking traditions. Just because they have worked in the past doesn’t mean they will work in the future. We are now questioning everything related to grape growing and winemaking. Inertia, habits, and routine can be difficult to change.

Fortunately Linden has our own bottling line, which gives us flexibility. Until 2003 we depended on an outside mobile bottling service, which is common for most small wineries. Mobile bottling lines make a lot of sense as they represent a huge cost savings (Linden’s bottling line is our most expensive piece of equipment and is only used six days out of the year). However, with mobile bottling there is no flexibility with timing because scheduling needs to be set many months in advance.

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Linden Vineyards / Learn More / Latest at Linden | Journal: March 12, 2022