“Cathy Corison is my heroine. She makes such great wine - the essence of Napa Valley minus the bludgeoning force, plus a sensible price tag.”
WINEMAKING
Cathy has long known that she can’t make a wine any better than the grapes that come into the winery at harvest, so all year she spends much of her time and energy out in the vineyards.
The Power of Cabernet
Cabernet Sauvignon makes powerful wine no matter where, or how, it grows. For Cathy, it is much more interesting at the intersection of power and elegance, seeming opposites. Careful canopy management, requiring meticulous handwork throughout the growing season, yields fully ripe fruit that retains snappy natural acidity at moderate sugar levels. Ample, velvety tannins give the wines gentle grip and, combined with good acidity, allow the wines to grace the table and enjoy remarkable longevity.
Great grapes make great wine. Cathy’s winemaking is largely non-interventionist, with gentleness at every step. Everything she does is geared toward getting all the goodness out of the grapes and leaving anything undesirable behind. When fermentation is complete, the wines go down to small French oak barrels to spend the next 20 months undergoing the magical alchemy that is wine aging.
Sustainability
We’re all in this together. Our mission at Corison Winery is to produce world-class Cabernet Sauvignon with integrity. With this intention, one of our founding principles is to minimize negative impacts on the environment.
Kronos Vineyard has been farmed sustainably for over twenty years, employing organic farming techniques, as has Sunbasket Vineyard since 2015. Compost and cover crops promote flourishing soils which, in turn, nourish the vines. We till to manage weeds and use no synthetic pesticides. Organic certification is imminent!
We employ nesting boxes in the vineyard to encourage obliging birds to take up residence. Bluebirds consume harmful insects, including leafhoppers and mealybugs, and Barn Owls hunt four-legged varmints.
With water being one of our biggest challenges in California, we are nudging our vineyards toward dry farming, encouraging our mature vines to send roots deep into the soil. Kronos Vineyard grows on deeply-rooted St. George rootstock, which is known for its ability to be dry-farmed. State-of-the-art water stress sensors and drip-irrigation help us optimize this precious resource when the vines do need water.
Mindful of our carbon footprint, solar panels on the winery roof produce all of our electricity. Cathy commutes to the winery and makes her vineyard rounds gasoline- and emissions-free by bicycle or electric car, and the winery offers charging stations for visitors. We use an electric forklift in the winery, and will soon have an electric tractor.
William built passive night-cooling into the design of the winery with the cool night air drawn in through louvers on the ground floor and warm air vented to the outside through classic cupolas on the roof. And behind the scenes, our goal of paperless administration is within sight.