One winter in Kalamazoo Michigan, my grandmother Ada commented on how beautiful the trees were. I looked at their jagged, leafless branches, and I thought they were too empty to be beautiful. But my grandmother found beauty in unexpected places. It took me many years to understand what she saw in those meandering branches. A winter tree is an intricate silhouette, dark against the luminous winter sky. My grandmother’s love of nature transformed something barren into something beautiful and alive. TreeSky is inspired by this transformation. This wine embodies the subtle beauty that emerges when we pause to witness the natural world around us.
The fruit is hand harvested at peak ripeness for optimal wine flavor. The fruit is gently destemed into small open top fermenters. The berries are allowed to cold soak for 4 days before fermentation starts with native yeast. Once the fermentation begins the cap is gently punched down by hand or the juice is “pumped over’’ using gravity. The fermentation lasted 12 days. After the free run is drained down into barrels. The must is then gently pressed directly into separate barrels.