A Year In Review + What's Ahead For 2022

Another year at Ricci Vineyards is all buttoned up and in the books, and yes, what a year it was. If anybody reading this is searching for physical proof of the peaks and valleys we all experience under this crazy circus tent of life, you need not search beyond the day-to-day of a typical farmer. In what most would consider a disaster-riddled 2020 nothing went right or well.

Onto 2021. Oh, what a difference a year makes. There still was COVID and wildfires, but speaking in a purely selfish sense, neither really affected what we were doing at Ricci Vineyards. In fact, if everything that seemingly could go wrong transpired in 2020, the very opposite was true in 2021. Unlike 2020, the smoke from the wildfires stayed away, the weather was perfect, and harvest couldn't have gone much smoother if we had asked for it. There was an incident where a person apparently wasn't paying attention and careened off the road and through a block of our Chardonnay vines going 80 MPH...but that is a story for another time.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, the best thing of 2021 was...YOU. During the year we were fortunate to share our family legacy, our stories, and our wine with so many like-minded and truly awesome friends and ambassadors to the Ricci wine brand. Without you we truly wouldn't be able to keep our wine dreams alive, so thank you for enjoying the ride with us and drinking the wines we have unleashed into the world. The awesomeness of 2021 culminated with a harvest party that we hosted on our vineyard at the end of October. This coincided with the release of our brand new and already super popular Cesta Cuvée. Even though there was a storm bearing down eager to dump 5+ inches of rain on us, we threaded the needle and were able to shoehorn our party in-between the last few dry hours of a Saturday evening and the onslaught of a monsoon. If you were there and reading this, we hope you has as much fun as we did. If you didn't attend, there will be more parties to follow. By the way, pictures from the event are forthcoming (laziness and the reluctance to dive into the time-suck that is photo editing are both very real things).

Now, here we are in 2022. ​Our holiday hiatus is over and we are ready to fully immerse ourselves into the thick of things once again. We obviously can't predict what we can't control, but we have faith and a good feeling that things are going to be a continuation from the great year that we just experienced. 

The Ricci Family thanks you for an awesome 2021. We'll see you in 2022!

We do have a few exciting things lined up in the pipeline. Without giving too much away, we have another new wine that is ready to be unveiled in early March by our estimation and a new vintage of Pommard Pinot Noir that will available shortly as well. In regard to the new wine, what we will say is that if you're a fan of bubbles, you are going to be incredibly excited. Also, we preemptively pulled approximately 12 acres of vines out of our vineyard with the notion that we would be replanting with some obscure, offbeat, and totally radical new grape varietals that nobody else is really doing. Think of our journey with St. Laurent and then multiply it by 5 or 6 (that's how many new varietals we're planning to introduce into our operation). Although we will have to wait for awhile until these new vines start producing fruit, by 2025 or 2026 we will have even more cool wines to add to our lineup and share with you.

One last thing that we are incredibly excited about is that Ricci Vineyards is going to soon have a brand new online look and feel. Not that there is anything wrong with the way the website works now, but we felt we could be doing more. More features, better navigation, vibrant imagery and tons of rich content; yes, it is going to be quite the spectacle. For those of you in our membership program, we intend on having a feature where you will be able to login to your account and customize your shipments, update profile info and so forth. Even though we are farmers, we're geeking out about the tech side of things pretty hard, so hopefully you are looking forward to it as well.

Well, I suppose that pretty much wraps everything that we need to talk about it for now. We are optimistic about what this new year has in store for us and we are looking forward to sharing many great moments, memories, and bottles of wine with you in 2022 and beyond. See you soon, and until then, cheers!