| Your continued support means the world to us, and we're so grateful for the incredible community we've built together. This newsletter is your inside connection to everything happening at Stone Tower. Each issue, you'll hear directly from our winemaker, James Phillips, as he shares behind-the-scenes stories from the cellar and vineyard. You'll also get a personal window into what's inspiring the Huber family and what they're most excited about. | | | Our winemaker, James Phillips, takes a moment to reflect on the highlights and happenings of the past month. | |  | Carefully managed canopy helps balance vine growth and fruit development — a key part of ensuring grape quality, especially during a vigorous season like this one.
With over 95 acres of planted vines here at Stone Tower Winery, canopy management is a full-time job. Our crew has a lot of work cut out for them | | | Bloom wrapped up at the beginning of the month, giving way to the next critical stage in the growing season: fruit set. This is when the flowers that successfully self-pollinated during bloom begin transforming into tiny, green grape berries. It's one of the most telling moments in the vineyard, offering the first real glimpse of what the season's crop might look like, in terms of quantity and uniformity. So far, we're seeing a good average fruit set across most varieties, which sets us up for a great start to the rest of the season. As the clusters develop, so does the canopy (the leaves and shoots) and right now, managing that growth is a full-time job. Each variety grows a little differently, and some bring their own personality to the mix. Petit Manseng, for example, is especially vigorous this time of year. It grows fast and full with large leaves, and if we're not on it, it can quickly turn into a bit of a jungle. Part of the management of all this growth is by hedging across the vineyard, trimming back the tops of the shoots to keep the canopy in check. This helps balance the vine's energy between shoot growth and fruit development, and also improves light penetration and airflow which really help with the fruit quality and disease prevention. Canopy management is especially important this season because we've seen a significant increase in rainfall compared to the drier years we've had recently. More rain means more vigor, but it also brings increased disease pressure. We're staying on top of it with diligent canopy work, which helps sun and wind get into the canopy to reduce humidity around the clusters and keeps conditions less favorable for things like mildew and rot. However, not every part of the vineyard sees rain as a challenge. The younger vines, especially in our two newest blocks, Cabernet Sauvignon Block X and Cabernet Franc Block Z, are loving it. Their roots are still developing, and the rain and increased soil moisture has helped them explode with healthy growth. We're seeing strong, healthy growth in both blocks, and it's exciting to watch these young vines start to take hold and become part of the vineyard's future. | |  | | Weeks of tasting, sampling, and planning led us here — the final blending phase, where accuracy and execution take center stage. | | | After weeks of blending trials with our 2023 red wines, we now can move on to putting this big blending puzzle together. Since most of these wines all have many different components going into them, it takes a lot of careful planning on how to actually blend them together. To help with the accuracy of the blending process, we use a combination of things; a special dipstick to measure the barrel volumes, flow meters that work with our pumps, and measuring the tanks as we are adding wine into them. We want to be as accurate as possible since even a 1 or 2 percent difference in the wine has the potential to change the wine a little bit. One thing we always try to do because of this is to put together our reserve wines first, that way we can really feel confident about the accuracy of our blending. And once the blends are finalized, the wines then make their way down the hill to our lower production facility, where we will spend several long days on our bottling line. It's always a high-energy stretch in the cellar with a lot of focus as thousands of bottles get filled, corked, and labeled, ready to begin the next phase of their journey. Alongside bottling our still wines, we've also been preparing for one of the most specialized tasks in the cellar: tirage bottling for our estate sparkling wines. For our Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, and Brut Rosé, we use the traditional method, called méthode traditionnelle or méthode champenoise, which is the same process used in Champagne. It all starts in the vineyard, where we harvest the fruit a bit earlier than usual to preserve higher acidity and lower sugar levels. That balance is crucial to producing a crisp, elegant sparkling wine.  The initial wine we make at harvest results in what's known as a base wine, typically with an alcohol content around 10.5%. That lower alcohol is essential, because the next step, tirage, involves a second fermentation inside the bottle, increasing the alcohol content slightly. To begin tirage, we prepare what's called a liqueur de tirage, a precise mix of yeast and sugar added to the base wine. This step is delicate, because we're introducing new yeast into a fairly challenging environment. Over six days, we carefully build up a healthy yeast culture, monitoring population counts to ensure the yeast is strong and active before it's added to the tank.
On bottling day, the liqueur de tirage is blended into the base wine, and a circulation mixer keeps the tank gently moving to ensure that every bottle receives an even distribution of yeast and sugar. Once bottled and sealed under crown caps (the same kind used for beer bottles), the secondary fermentation begins. Inside each bottle, the yeast consumes the added sugar, producing carbon dioxide (which creates the bubbles) and lees (spent yeast cells). These lees are essential for developing the wine's texture, mouthfeel, and those classic toasty, brioche-like aromas. It's a process that requires precision, because the amount of sugar added directly affects the level of carbonation, and by the end, each bottle can hold up to 3 times the pressure in your car tire. Once fermentation is complete (about a month), the bottles are laid on their sides and tucked away for long-term aging. This extended lees contact helps the wine develop complexity, elegance, and that fine mousse we love in traditional sparkling wine. And when the time is right, we'll bring them back out for the next stage of their journey, but until then, we let them sleep. | |  | When the tasting pour quickly turns into an infinitely deep well…
(You can spot this sculpture diving into the sparkling house tanks on your next tour) | | | "Wine to me is something that brings people together. Wine does promote conversation and civility, but it's also fascinating. It's the greatest subject to study. No matter how much you learn, every vintage is going to come at you with different factors that make you have to think again."
~ Robert M. Parker, Jr., Founder of the Wine Advocate
| | | While I don't agree with the legendary Robert Parker on everything — my favorite wines are much more subtle than the big California cabernets he positioned as the pinnacle of winemaking in the 1980's and onwards — we are in complete agreement in the idea that "wine is something that brings people together," and not just in the sense that it's a fun diversion to drink a bottle of wine with friends (which it is, of course!). Over the past 12 years since opening Stone Tower, we've developed an amazing community of members and staff that share one deep curiosity — wine. I've watched many people catch the "wine bug" — that first wine tasting where it's actually explained to you how fine wine is made and how to properly taste it demystifies what's in the glass just enough to where you feel comfortable asking some questions, then trying more wines, and asking more questions, then you're buying Karen McNeil's "The Wine Bible" and downloading Vivino, and on and on and on. Learning about the intricacies, subtleties, and history of this amazing, living product can quickly become a passionate, unending pursuit. Soon you realize that once you've entered the world of wine, there is an absolutely infinite amount of fascinating wines with delicious rabbit holes into different regions, styles, vintages, processes, and more.
At this point, I can't count how many staff members we've brought on at Stone Tower who start with us looking for a fun weekend job and have a little curiosity about wine, who transform into complete and total wine geeks within weeks. It's always such a joy to see our team start tasting groups together or "blind taste" each other on classic wines. This type of education really does have the very best kind of homework — drinking wine! | |  | | A snap from one of the staff tastings we ran this July – tasting our upcoming reds | | Several times each year, we host our "staff tastings" where we taste and examine several wines as a group and then enjoy a potluck dinner. These evenings are always filled with probing questions and incredible insights — and lots of good food too! A few weeks ago, James led us through a tasting of 2023 Stone Tower red wines before their bottling began. It's a rare opportunity to taste a wine at this point in its life — and it is a delicious one — they are fresh and bright, with strong structure that you can imagine will soften and integrate with some bottle aging. Our resident wine geeks will be excited to pour these for you all at the tasting bar once they are on the wine list later this fall & winter!
At Stone Tower, we try to offer many different ways to dive deep into wine for our guests too — and not just our estate wines, but also the history of Virginia wines and fascinating wines from around the world. Of course, our guided tastings at the bar are the simplest way to gain some insight into what we do at Stone Tower, and the wines are constantly changing, so there is always something new to discover. Our Cellar Tours, Signature Tours, and Estate Experiences are available each day by reservation, and each experience offers a deeper and deeper look at how fine wine is made and our experience growing and producing world-class wine here on our estate. Our SOMMinar Series is invaluable training for anyone with a budding wine curiosity — each session looks at a different style of wine or region with benchmark wines from around the world in an educational presentation alongside delicious food pairing. You learn a lot — and it's fun! August's look at Sauvignon Blanc is sure to be a treat. Just watch out…these experiences are known to make you catch the wine bug! | | Join Senior Brand Ambassadors Joe and Diane for a guided tasting featuring vibrant Sauvignon Blancs from top global regions—alongside our own Stone Tower selections. Discover the varietal's diverse styles, from crisp and grassy to rich and tropical.
To elevate the experience, Executive Chef Zach Miller has curated thoughtful pairings that bring each wine to life. | | | During the growing season last year, we captured a photograph every day of a single vine. This vine is a Cabernet Sauvignon vine, in block S of our vineyard.
These photos are from June 18 – July 23 2024 | | | |
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