Moshin Vineyards 2025

​Our intrepid band of wine explorers were excited about our second day of our second Sonoma trip a as it took us back to Moshin Vineyards, a winery in the Russian River region that we visited during our barrel tasting expedition.  This time around we arranged for Rick Moshin to give us a tour of the facility.  As noted in my first post about this winery, it is on a hillside to allow Rick to gravity feed the wine rather than pump it.  Ergo, we had to start the tour at the top of the hill.  Unfortunately, our rental vehicle (shown below) could not make the trip so we had to walk up this very steep hill and, well, I’m not young.  Fortunately, we got around to the wine….

​I won’t go into much about how he makes his wine as I covered it in detail in my last post about Moshin Vineyards.  I did learn that he is doing some of his wine growing using biodynamic processes.  One in particular is worth mentioning.  If you bury nettles in the ground nothing happens – dig them up a year or so later and they are still nettles.  However, if you wrap them in sheep intestines then bury them when you dig them up you get a black goo that you can spray on your vines as an insect repellent!  Some pictures of his system follow below, with a picture of Rick as well, but, not sorry to say, no pictures of the goo:

​We sat out front this time, and, unfortunately, wound up partially in the sun.  Nonetheless, we stayed around to taste a wide variety of products and, much to my surprise, I purchased bottles of their Cabernet Sauvignon made from grapes grown in the Dry Creek area of Sonoma.  I did not purchase any Pinot Noir.  Why?  Well, he had this great deal last summer on Pinot Noir….  We wound up buying three cases of wine for shipment back to San Diego, though I should add that our intrepid group just ordered two more cases….