Gentle, minimal handling has been the hallmark of Adelsheim Vineyard's winemaking since our first vintage was produced in a cramped basement winery, utilizing a simple crusher and press, and 20 Burgundy barrels. Today, a cutting-edge facility at our Calkins Lane Vineyard provides all the quality controls demanded by our "hands-off" winemaking, combining function with understated elegance.

The winemaking process at Adelsheim Vineyard is extremely gentle, and is identical for our four series of wines. At harvest, the grapes are picked by hand into small totes, and are delivered to the winery's two-level, gravity-feed fermentation room. There, our white wine grapes are gently pressed as whole clusters and the juice transferred to the winery's tank room.  Slow, cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks emphasizes the bright intensity and fruit flavors in our unoaked white wines, while barrel fermentation and extended lees contact gives our Reserve Chardonnay richness and lovely balance.

Our red wine grapes are carefully sorted by hand and gently destemmed into small, open-top fermenters. Following a pre-fermentation maceration, slow, cool fermentations emphasize the nuanced flavors and aromas of our Pinot noir and Syrah, and the must is punched down two to three times daily for greater extraction of flavor and color. After fermentation and gentle pressing, the new wines are slowly transferred to barrel for aging.

The winery's four underground barrel caves utilize pre-cast concrete arches and temperature-controlled floors to provide optimal temperature and humidity for slow, cool aging of our red wines and our Caitlin's Reserve. During barrel aging, the wines typically undergo a secondary, malolactic fermentation to add further richness and complexity, and are bottled following 10 to 12 months in small French oak barrels.

All of our annual production is bottled on a mobile bottling truck.  This high-speed, fully sterile bottling line is contained inside a semi-truck trailer which accesses the roll-up doors on our loading dock.  Inside, the empty bottles are first sparged with nitrogen gas to eliminate oxygen, and are then filled, corked, capsuled, labelled, and finally boxed.  Once palletized, the finished cases are stored in our temperature-controlled warehouse prior to shipping.