This year we are facing up to a couple of anniversaries, the 10th year for our winery and the 20th year for our vineyards. In honor of these special milestones we will be including some special items in our news notes this year. It might be fun to get some input from you, our customers on your favorite Jarvis wine experiences, your special occasions celebrated with JARVIS, or your favorite varietals, or perhaps a fun memory from one of our events. You can mail them to us or drop us an email at info@jarviswines.com.

When we planted the vineyards in 1985 we didn't exactly start from scratch; we had the 40 years of experience of our Consultant (now our winemaker) Dimitri Tchelistcheff. Later on we also brought in Dr. Smart, a real "smart" vineyard consultant. There has been quite a bit of new vineyard practices come along in the last 20 years including some important things I have learned about our own vineyard.

Next came our winery; by 1995 we had finished excavating the cave and opened the winery for business, at this time Dimitri became our full time winemaker. Then began a 10 year process of trying to make each year's wine better than the previous year's. My wife Leticia and I feel like having our own personal celebration just tasting our wines; the earlier years' wines are improving each year due to their cave aging, and the new wines get better most every year. So we do have occasion to celebrate.

Also we discovered that "other" varietal, Cabernet Franc, which does so splendidly in our hill climate close to the San Francisco Bay. And following that we discovered that special Finch Hollow valley which the first few years gave us practically no production until we started netting our vineyards; then we discovered what the Finches and Blackbirds had known all along. From that Finch Hollow now comes our finest Chardonnay.

There will be two special occasions at the winery this year. First, an all out Amethyst Anniversary Ball on Saturday, April 30th for Inner Circle members. Second, a public Harvest Wine Tasting on Saturday, October 8th from 1-5 pm.