How do you Press Syrah in Your Garage?

With just a little pressing and a lot of cleaning!

…and it’s all faster with friends

Our dear friend, Juergen, was visiting from Germany and got roped into helping press the Syrah grapes for the first wine Mike made from our Healdsburg vineyard. The grapes were crushed and then sat on the skins for 10 days in our garage. We used a basket press (seen at the right of the photo above) loaned by one of our neighbors. The press extracts the juice from the crushed grapes leaving behind the skins and seeds. The grapes are pressed gently to avoid crushing the seeds and releasing undesirable tannins.

It’s strange that this step in the wine-making process is called pressing, when much less time is spent pressing and a lot more is spent washing barrels! The importance and amount of time spent on cleanliness in winemaking is often a surprise to beginning winemakers.

Mike and Juergen did a great job! This 2002 Syrah turned out to be delicious. It eventually came to be called Garage Syrah and was responsible for seducing us into starting a winery. Like most things, we just didn’t know it at the time!

Jul 1, 2019 at 8:35 AM Permalink

Amista, Sonoma, Sustainable!

"Since 2013, Amista Vineyards in Dry Creek Valley has been working with the Sonoma County Water Agency to recreate a thriving habitat for endangered Steelhead trout and Coho salmon", writes Karin von Berg, Editor of Luxelife Magazine. Von Berg was a part of Sustainabiliy Camp, hosted by the Sonoma County Winegrowers, where participants saw first hand the many vineyards and wineries who are working to make the county a model of sustainability.

Read how Amista Vineyards and many of our neighbors are working to achieve the goal of 100% sustainability.

Jun 20, 2019 at 4:04 PM Permalink

Amista Vineyards is Part of Sonoma's Goal to be 100% Sustainable

"Sonoma tends to operate much like its own planet...as pretty much everything you eat and drink here is grown off of the land within the county," writes Shauna Farnell about her recent visit. 

"Wander through the vineyards of Amista, Dry Creek Valley’s only producer of sparkling wine, and arrive at the actual Dry Creek. Amista has resting ponds for spawning salmon along their upstream journeys, and cover crops keep the soil healthy and foster microbial activity," adds Farnell.

Read all about Sonoma's - and Amista's - mission to become 100% sustainable on Matador Network.

Jun 16, 2019 at 2:40 PM Permalink

How do you Punch Down Syrah in Your Garage?

Make Sure You Have Friends Visiting!

…because it's a lot easier and more fun!

Mike had harvested 3 tons of Syrah grapes from our Healdsburg vineyard, and they were soaking in bins in our garage to develop color and flavors. While the grapes are soaking, a cap of grape skins rises to the top of each bin. That cap needs to be “punched down” daily to reincorporate it with the juice. Punch down is hard work, which why it’s best to entice friends to help. Enter our long-time friends Meg and Dale who came to visit from our home state of Colorado.

Dale helped Mike 8 years earlier with punch downs in another garage at our home in Silicon Valley when Mike made his first wine from Cabernet grapes. They had just as much fun then as they did in their long-awaited encore performance! Meg and I once again made sure we had something else to do – shopping, lunch, sipping a glass of wine.

That’s probably why I didn’t recognize that Mike was becoming captivated with making wine and that we would eventually find ourselves in the wine business with our friends cheering us on every step of the way!

Jun 3, 2019 at 8:27 AM Permalink

How do you Crush Syrah in Your Garage?

With Help from Family & Friends!

…and a little help from John Deere

We were finally able to move to our Healdsburg vineyard in June 2002. We had replaced half of the Chardonnay vines with Syrah in 2000 and the young vines were just starting to produce fruit. A true viticulturist would have advised dropping all the fruit and letting the vines mature another year. This is so the fruit will not compete with the vine reserves needed to develop the vines and root system. Well, Mike had other ideas. He wanted to MAKE WINE!

He harvested 3 tons – which sounded huge to me – to make wine in our garage. Mike’s brother Bob and wife Anne came to help. Our neighbors also came to lend a hand and loaned us a small crusher/destemmer. Having a machine that crushes the fruit and removes the stems in one step not only saved us a lot of time but also results in better wine by making sure all the stems are removed.

We learned right away that Healdsburg is a friendly place and neighbors are always willing to pitch in. The friendly spirit of Dry Creek Valley turned out to be one of the most wonderful aspects of living in this special place.

May 6, 2019 at 8:20 AM Permalink

Amista Sparkling Grenache - Winning Wines Created by Women

"Winemaker Ashley Herzberg makes every bottle of this Grenache sparkle - literally - using the Methode Champenoise, the process used to make French Champagne", says Alison Blain Barz in Uptown.

Check out Viticulture Visionaires, Winning wines made by women.

May 1, 2019 at 1:27 PM Permalink

5 Reasons for a Sparkling Wine Club

Why We Created Amista Sparkling Friends

Because sparkling wine is meant to be enjoyed with friends!

1. As a lover of Champagne and sparkling wine, I know that bubbles lovers want their bubbles. We already had a wine club for our red and white wines. But if you're like me, you want the choice to get only sparkling wines in your club.

2. We will use any excuse to share an extraordinary wine and food pairing. We launched “Sparkling Friends” in 2014 at Passport to Dry Creek Valley, the premiere wine and food event in the area. And we showcased our Blanc de Blanc with fresh shucked oysters! 

3. Winemaker Ashley Herzberg and I like to experiment with grapes that are not traditionally used in Champagne, especially our Rhône varieties. Having a wine club sort of pushes us to play with new wines to keep things interesting. We now have a collection of sparkling "gems”, and we want to keep creating more!

4. We want our Sparkling Friends to have first “pop” at our limited production, estate grown sparkling wines. We are a small “grower sparkling house", much like the small grower Champagne houses in France. Our production is extremely limited, and our sparkling wines often sell out before the next release.

5. Ashley and I say we make sparkling wines for ourselves, and we also love to share! That’s what friends do – share their discoveries with their friends! Amista means making friends, so it just makes sense.

Apr 1, 2019 at 2:27 PM Permalink

How to Find a Vineyard in Healdsburg

We bought ours on the Internet!

Well almost. Mike answered a questionnaire: “Can you afford a vineyard?”

When we left California for my job in New Jersey we brought along a barrel of Cabernet, Mike’s first garage-made wine. But it wasn’t enough to drink the wine, he wanted to make more! So, he started searching for properties in Healdsburg, one of our favorite spots in wine country. He came across a realtor’s website and decided to answer a survey. Big mistake! He was soon communicating regularly with said realtor who had three properties “that would be perfect for us, but they wouldn’t last long.”

Somehow, I found myself on a plane to SFO and then off to Healdsburg, where four of our closest friends met us to help inspect the properties. They gave us helpful advice like where we should build the house and place their guest rooms. We decided on this beautiful vineyard in the heart of Dry Creek Valley and the rest, as they say, is history.

I thought we were simply buying a vineyard property. Little did I know it would evolve into starting a winery, opening a tasting room, and venturing into Rhône varietals and a collection of sparkling wines. It’s been quite a journey!

Mar 4, 2019 at 4:05 PM Permalink

How Anyone Can Become a Winemaker

All You Need is a Little Help from Your Friends!

...and wine is better with friends!

Two of our dearest friends, Meg and Dale from Colorado, stood with us in our first vineyard as we said good-bye to California just before moving to New Jersey for my job. We all shed a little tear knowing we would never see that Silicon Valley vineyard produce grapes. it was only a year old, and it usually takes three or four years to mature enough to yield a full crop. 

Earlier that year they were there to help with the punch-down of some Cabernet grapes Mike bought from a local vineyard to make his first wine in our garage. I learned that a punch-down is when a device (think of a big potato-masher) pushes down the cap of skins that have risen to the surface of the fermenting grapes, breaks it up and submerges it again. Red grapes usually spend a couple of weeks “on the skins” to give the wine the desired color and flavors and need regular punch-downs. We didn’t have a “device”, so Mike and Dale used their arms, and both got purple up to their armpits. Meg and I escaped to a wonderful little bed and breakfast on the coast. My plan was always to be otherwise engaged when there was work to do!

But I was there, and so were Meg and Dale, when the wine was ready to drink. They came to visit us in New Jersey where we had transported the barrel of Mike’s first wine. It spent a couple of years in our basement aging and when it was ready to drink, we bottled some up and served it to friends at dinner. It was delicious! I learned later that Mike said to himself, “I wanna make more wine!” What I said to myself is, “Wine is even better with friends!” Those would turn out to be the themes of our journey into wine.

Feb 4, 2019 at 3:22 PM Permalink

What Pairs with Sparkling Blanc de Blanc?

In my book, almost everything!

How about seared sea scallop, grapefruit, and avocado salad?

Amista means making friends and some of our best wine and food pairings come from friends. My friend Hallie is my inspiration. She’s a busy career woman, a mom, and an amazing home chef.

Her simple salad is made with Mache as the greens (butter lettuce would also be wonderful), tossed with sliced avocado and fresh grapefruit segments. The dressing is light with just a touch of Dijon mustard. It’s topped with seared sea scallops and makes a lovely first course or light lunch. Our Blanc de Blanc makes it sing!

Inspire your friends with this simple, delicious recipe!

Jan 7, 2019 at 9:28 AM Permalink