The first of the 2007 Releases were announced in a newsletter mailed in the Fall 2008; the rest of the 2007 Releases will be announced in Spring 2008. If you would like to join the Brewer - Clifton mailing list, please click here.

This is from the most recent (Fall 2008) newsletter:

The past several years have been marked by significant evolution for us, particularly with regard to our own vineyard development and moving into our new winery facility. While such change can prove to be challenging at times, we are thrilled with our decisions as we prepare ourselves for the coming years. The interest towards wines from the Sta. Rita Hills appellation has never been more elevated around the globe, and we are excited to remain steadfastly committed here as the exclusive origin of our wines.

The harvest season of 2007 will, without question, be remembered as one of the most compelling of the last twenty years. Rarely have we witnessed such equilibrium between yield, fruit concentration, color and acidity for both chardonnay and pinot noir. It is a year such as this that reminds us that nature transcends anything that can subsequently take place in the cellar, as the potential quality was immediately clear upon the harvesting of the grapes. This is undoubtedly a year which will qualitatively eclipse its predecessors.

Coupled with our strong sentiments towards 2007, we are also pleased to announce that for the very first time we are blending some of our most significant vineyard holdings to produce a “Sta. Rita Hills” appellation chardonnay and pinot noir. The desire to produce these wines was inspired by our strong interest to not only display individual vineyard character through our designate bottlings, but also to offer a more comprehensive voice of the appellation through these two selections. The provenance for both the chardonnay and pinot are former vineyard specific lots and will be handled in the winery identically to our other bottlings. While we are still very inspired by the specific personalities of our other sites which will continue to be bottled separately, we are thrilled with the balance and harmony of these two new wines.

The packaging for the two “appellation” wines will be virtually identical to everything that we have done in the past, however we found it a fitting opportunity to implement a new cork called Diam. Over the years we have experienced a very low incidence of cork taint, largely due to our scrutiny over every step of the production and cleansing process. Nonetheless, we have been frustrated by the inevitable irregularity of standard cork closures and have explored alternatives that have been successfully used in Europe. Diam corks are manufactured with a revolutionary, high pressure CO2 cleansing process which eliminates the risk of TCA as well as hundreds of other potential sources of cork taint. We still plan to use traditional corks for our vineyard designate wines this year, with the intent of completely
switching over to our new found seal in the near future.

In closing, it is with great anticipation that we present our first wines from 2007 in this fall offering. In addition to the Sta. Rita Hills chardonnay and pinot noir, we are pleased to release a pair of chardonnays from Sea Smoke and Mount Carmel as well as a trio of pinot noirs from Rancho Santa Rosa, Cargasacchi and Mount Carmel. As the production of many of these selections is quite limited, we encourage you to order swiftly in order to secure your allocations. Orders are filled on a first come, first served basis.

Thank you all for your ongoing support of our appellation and work.