On June 5, the 2025 vintage went into tirage. Two vintages are aging in the cellar. One is growing in the vineyard, running 30 days ahead of last year. Planning for a third harvest is already underway. And we visited stunning potential expansion sites here in the Sta. Rita Hills. This is what it looks like when a wine project is fully in motion.

In the weeks since blending trials, the 2025 vintage of AERILYN has moved from bench blends to full cellar blends, through stabilization and lab testing, and is about to travel 30 miles north to begin its second fermentation in bottle. A look at the work between the blend and the bubble.

Two days later, I rented a car and drove five hours back to Santa Ynez

Three days before my first harvest, a farming mistake made the fruit unusable. What happened next led me exactly where I was supposed to be.

Traditional-method sparkling wine goes through a process so precise and so miraculous that once you understand it, you will never look at a glass of bubbles the same way.

I did not set out to build a wine brand. I set out to understand a single glass of Champagne that I stayed with me. That curiosity followed me through over twenty years in corporate life, supporting other people's visions. AERILYN is what I built in the margins. Now it has my full attention.