The end of summer and early fall marks the end of the growing season, and the beginning of the winemaking of the new vintage. During this time, it is also imperative that we fit in a bottling of the red wines from two vintages ago, thus freeing up the barrels needed to cellar the upcoming vintage. At Sierra Vista we believe that two years of barrel aging is the perfect amount of time to soften our wines, as well as age them for complexity and drinkability upon release. With the preparation for the upcoming harvest, and getting all of the wines blended, racked, filtered and ready for bottle it makes for a busy time of year. This is also the time of year where we get new (one year old) French oak barrels from a prestigious winery in Napa that uses purchases the barrels brand new and uses them for about nine months, and then sells them to us. Let me tell you, when the new barrels come off the truck it feels like Christmas at the winery with all the promise of the upcoming vintage, and the shiny new barrels to age the wine in. We have found that these barrels provide the perfect amount of oak influence on the wines. This starts the cycle of culling out our oldest barrels and replacing them with the new barrels. A winery can use a barrel for an almost unlimited number of seasons, but the barrel loses any flavor added to the wine after about three years of use. There are wines such as our Grenache with its fruit-oriented nature, and soft tannins where we don’t want to use newer barrels, but prefer older neutral barrels to age the wine in. We generally use the majority of our new barrels on our Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and our Syrah.