For a winery in its infancy, Cantiga Wineworks has reason to be proud. The months and years of planning finally paid off this fall as the young company successfully completed its first crush.

Tangible evidence of these past two years' efforts is sitting in 50 French oak barrels in the bowels of Kirigin Cellars, an historic Gilroy, California winery that graciously opened its doors to Cantiga Wineworks this fall and offered custom crush space. With the help of Kirigin's General Manager, Allen Kreutzer, Cantiga produced approximately 2000 gal of Chardonnay from Monterey county, 1500 gal Cabernet Sauvignon from Paso Robles and El Dorado county, and 500 gal Shiraz, also from Monterey county. Although ambitious for a first crush, this production volume is on a boutique scale by industry standards.

"Our goal for our first crush," says Rich Rorden, Cantiga's Co-Managing Member, "was to get our feet wet in the industry, sample what a number of different wine regions have to offer, and determine how successfully we can apply our style of winemaking to grapes from these diverse sources. Overall, we're quite happy with the results, and what we have learned from the experience will inform the choices we make in 2001 and beyond."

Although plans for the future include planting a vineyard of its own, Cantiga Wineworks currently purchases all of its grapes from established, premium vineyards. Their Chardonnay and Shiraz come from Ventana Vineyards near Soledad, California, a highly reputable source with which the Rorden family has longtime ties. The two sources of Cabernet Sauvignon were new to the family this past year—Gold Hill Vineyard near Placerville, and Fuller Vineyard, a small, dry-farmed vineyard in Paso Robles.

Y2K was a bit of an unusual year for many parts of California. A long, hot growing season was promising to yield a large and very ripe crop when the climate unexpectedly cooled and early rains forced many vineyards to pick ahead of schedule. In spite of this, the quality of Cantiga's 2000 vintage is proving to be shaping up wonderfully, even at this early stage when the wine still has many months of aging to look forward to. It is expected that the first bottles of the 2000 vintage will be released sometime in 2002.