Enjoy the ultimate in estate landscaping with a customized backyard vineyard.
Post & Trellis will custom design, install, and manage your vineyard. From concept to completion, you can depend on our thorough dedication to world-class vineyard management and winemaking.
Firstly, we’ll review the site together to talk about the overall process, design and requirements for the vineyard. Next we’ll provide you a detailed proposal of all considerations and options.
Then we’ll take soil samples, send them to the lab and consult with you so that we can together select the best grape variety from local favorites such as Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah. We’ll then choose the right clones and rootstocks for your project’s micro-climate and soil conditions.
Sadly some private vineyards are built using ugly low-grade materials more suited to the Central Valley than private homes, awkwardly set up with unappealing sight line and spacings designed for tractors not homeowners. Our specialized post-trellis systems and row-vine spacings will be selected for high-visibility residential use to assure high-quality aesthetics.
Our much-refined and customized drip irrigation systems will conserve water while nourishing your vines. Lawns require 10 times more water to be sprayed than vines’ drip irrigation. Each vine will only be getting around 4 gallons per week until established, and then even less.
Following our expert installation, Post & Trellis will carefully sculpt your vines and nurture your vineyard throughout the year, following an exacting management timetable, with canopy and fruit management set up to assure perfectly ripened fruit.
Typically in year four, we’ll harvest your first vinifiable fruit and transport it to the winery. In the subsequent weeks and months, our traditional professional-grade equipment and full-time winemaker will crush, stem, sort, ferment, barrel, age and test the wine to ensure the highest quality results. Finally, we’ll bottle, cork, and capsule the wine with either your own design or our templates for labels. The success of our service depends on both you and your fussiest wine friends being delighted by the wine, a high standard we’re very used to and comfortable with (see winery awards page).
We proudly deliver personal service tailored to every client’s desires, requirements, unique site conditions, and budget. Whether you plant two hundred vines or two thousand, produce a few cases or several barrels.
To get started along this path, get in touch – we’ll talk about the outline process and budget, then if it makes sense to us both we’ll arrange to meet on site.
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A brief note on vineyards in the region
Around Saratoga, Los Gatos, Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley, Atherton, Woodside and along Skyline, the Peninsula offers excellent grape-growing conditions. Before the population explosion of the mid-1900’s, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties contained countless vineyards. Wine grapes thrive in the warm days and cool nights of this Bay Area viticultural region.
Nearly all of the older assumptions of vineyard installation and management are under review by those at the cutting edge of the wine industry. Examples include moving away from heavy row tillage and plowing, and moving toward cover crops and a no-till management philosophy; moving away from synthetic fertilizers towards organic and bio-intense approaches such as worm castings, sea kelp, foliar sprays, and composting. When it comes to grape quality in the pursuit of fine wine, there are many alternative canopy and training regimens to consider. A strong argument can be mounted for moving toward specialized clones, low vigor rootstocks, tighter row and plant spacing, and aggressive shoot thinning – all with the objective of a more intense yet balanced wine.
One current industry debate concerns varietal options. If one were to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and look out into the world for weather, soil, and geographical features that are similar to California, we might not look to France, as has been the historical tradition, but rather to Italy and Spain. Whereas France’s Bordeaux and Burgundy regions often have mid- and late-season rain and generally more cloudy summer weather and flatter topography, Italy and Spain enjoy hotter days and bluer skies during harvest, and are generally more arid and mountainous, as with Northern California. While we do not forecast that Cabernet will lose its title as the ‘king of varietals’, we do believe an opportunity exists for local vineyards and wineries to set themselves apart with imaginative varietals as well as the more classic ones.