Gainey Vineyards Blog

It's Friday, which means Meryl is back at it in the kitchen with a cooking video. Today she's using our Quarantine Pasta Kit to make Lemon Pepper Pasta, Spinach Salad, and Break w/dipping sauce. This kit includes:

Watch our tasting room manager Meryl cook Grilled Veggies with Spicy Grilled Shrimp using Gainey gourmet goods and paired with our Rosé wine.

Here is our weekly cooking video with our Tasting Room manager Meryl. This week she's making Appetizers: beef nachos, fried mozzarella sticks, and brie bites.

Our Tasting Room Manager, Meryl, has been with us for 24-years. She is also our food buyer for all our gourmet pantry products. Every Friday for the next few weeks, we will be brining you a cooking segment with Meryl where she'll pair our gourmet food products with Gainey wines from our Quarantine Kits.

We are often asked after a solid rainfall season “how did the rain affect the vineyards?”

And it’s a tricky question, because it can be positive or negative depending on timing during the vines growing cycle. We like winter rains—and yet we don’t like rain after berry set (May/June) or too close to harvest. The amount of rain makes a difference depending on the time of year as well. Winter = great. Late Summer and Fall rains = problematic.

Option #1: Estate Wineries

Estate wineries are what most people picture when they imagine going wine tasting: a pastoral setting with Instagram-able views of vineyards, high-end wines, and outdoor seating. The Santa Ynez Valley is filled with beautiful estate wineries that fulfill all the expectations of what a day of wine tasting should be. The wine tasting experience at an estate winery can end up being more transformative and experiential. Standing in the actual place where the grapes are grown and produced helps connect people to the land, the history, and the energy of the place. It rounds out the experience in a way that a non- estate tasting rooms can’t provide.

As one of the more popular wedding venues in the Santa Ynez Valley, we love helping brides and grooms bring their vision of a vineyard wedding to life. One of the top questions we get asked is "How much does it cost to have a vineyard wedding?"

One of our favorite local wedding planners who works with us frequently, Leanne Elliott of Soliel Events, has tackled this question head-on as a featured guest blogger on our website.

Harvest has begun here at Gainey. It’s when we turn from farmers into chemists. For most of the year, we are farmers, ensuring the grapes have the best chance at growing successfully and creating premium fruit. Ample amounts of sunshine, water, soil amendment, pruning, and some good luck all play into it. But once the grapes are ready to be picked, we turn into scientists trying to manage the fermentation process, keep the pH levels correct, test for acidity, and more.