The Secret white represented Greg's first attempt at making "orange" wine. White wine fermented on the skins, left on the lees and aged in a concrete egg, this is a surprisingly fresh wine. Very interesting for the wine geeks. For more on this wine, see below.

This wine started out as an experiment into a new category of wines. To say that my consulting winemaker, Mike Roth, and I were ahead of our time when we produced this wine in 2007 would be an understatement. Fast forward to 2010 and beyond and "orange" funky wines are all the rage. These wines fueled a whole cottage industry of "natural" wines, which I think must be one of the greatest misnomers serving only to further confuse most consumers. The genesis of this wine evolved from my experience buying and selling white wines, some made in amphorae, in NE Italy by the likes of Radikon and Gravner from the Friuli-Venezia part of NE Italy, not far from the Slovenian border. These wines were eye opening to me at the time. Essentially, these are white wine grapes fermented on the skins (like a red wine) for an extended aging period. The result is literally an orange-hued wine. The second motivation to produce this wine is the fact that Rhone varietals in general, and white Rhone varietals in particular, do not sell well in the marketplace. The solution; we decided in the fall of 2007 to make a totally different white Rhone wine from anyone else we knew at the time in California. The grapes were sourced from the biodynamically farmed vineyard at Demetria in Santa Ynez. The wine sat on the skins and lees inside a concrete egg for 45 days. Then, the wine aged in neutral French oak barrels for 14 months. To further the marketing experiment, I commissioned a collage artist, Marin Morrison, to make label art. On the back, I wrote a poem inspired by Rumi.

The wine was a total flop in the marketplace. People liked the story but buyers didn't know where to place the wine. What part of the wine list does this go on? Which section of the store do they put this white blend, in a retail store divided by varietal categories. Nevertheless, I'm very proud of this wine and our innovation and the lessons learned along the way. I often bring this wine out to sommelier events and wine dinners to showcase the evolution of our wines. This wine is still delicious and a delight to drink. Not even the "expert" Master Somms and others who I blind taste on this wine can guess the varietal and no one believes the wine is from 2007 because it is still fresh. Although it has an almond nuttiness, the wine is not oxidized. If you're curious about this wine, I encourage you to try it now. Only a few cases remain.