Welcome

High Elevation Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir & Syrah

From Our Vineyard In The Sky

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Muns Vineyard brushes the sky on the Loma Prieta ridge top above Monterey Bay at 2600 feet. This is the highest Pinot Noir vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a prime growing region for this luscious winegrape.

We enjoy the coastal climate of the mountains, with fog lapping at our feet in the summer. The cool coastal breeze that blows off the fog and sunlight are perfect for growing premium Pinot Noir. Moderate days and cool nights, along with diligent personal attention in our 13-acre owner-operated vineyard, produces fruit with rich and complex flavors. We have blended Dijon clones 114, 115, 667 and 777 to provide a complex and well-balanced wine.

Minimal intervention in the winery allows our unique terroir to shine. Barrel aging in 30% new oak for about 16 months adds soft tannins that accentuate, but not dominate, the beautiful fruit in this special wine. The wine drinks well now and is a delicious complement with food, and will bottle-age for years to come. Enjoy ‘heaven-in-a-bottle’ from our ridge top vineyard above the bay!

See more below about:

Vineyard Tasting Dates and More Wine Events

Vineside Pickup & Free Local Delivery

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Springtime, 2024 – Budbreak!

Budbreak in the Pinot Noir started for us the week of April 14. We are typically later than most in the region because of the continued very cold temps at our elevation that keep the vines dormant longer. But this is about 5 weeks behind our historical average of mid-March, and more in line with last year’s late budbreak the last week of April. The Syrah usually follows, and they are not far behind in leafing out. What is amazing is that these tiny little nubbins of a leaf will, in just a few weeks, grow to be several feet long!

The days are lengthening and warming up so the shoots are now growing fast. It is too early to predict what this budbreak delay might mean for the harvest schedule. The vines usually catch up and get on track to the ‘normal’ schedule, but last year a cool Spring that continued into a cool Summer delayed harvest. We will just have to see what this year brings. For now, frost is still a concern. We usually hope to make it through May, but last year we had a killing frost early in June, the latest we have ever experienced.

We have had 45″ of rain since September, making this a fairly normal rainy season. We had a couple of inches of snow the first week of April that quickly melted (nothing like the snowstorm in 2023). Instead, we had gale force winds exceeding 70mph during a wild storm in February. We are enjoying the Springtime sunshine and rebirth in the vineyard!

Budbreak just starting.

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Upcoming Events: Vineyard Tastings, Springtime 2024

May dates will be scheduled and posted here soon, so stay tuned.

Enjoy a sunny, warm Spring day in the vineyard. Come up to our ridge top vineyard and join us for a tasting outdoors on our deck with its panoramic views overlooking the mountains, Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay. Immerse yourself in our mountain terroir! The best place to purchase our wines is in the vineyard where the grapes are grown!

Please make a reservation with your choice of seating times: 11:30-1:30, 12:00-2:00, 12:30-2:30 or 1:00-3:00.

Email Mary at Mary@munsvineyard.com or call 408-234-2079. For details see the Vineyard Tastings page here

Please note: Tastings are outdoors and are dependent on conducive weather. Tastings may need to be rescheduled in the event of rain, heavy fog, cold temperatures, heat wave or other circumstances that inhibit wine tasting outdoors. We want you to enjoy your visit!

More Events Where You Can Find Us:

May 10: Taste of Terroir Dinner. The first Taste of Terroir dinner of the year, at Wrights Station Winery, just down the road from us – and Muns Vineyard will be a featured winery. Celebrate the unique wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains with a 1.5 hour wine tasting reception and silent auction followed by a winemaker dinner featuring the contemporary Italian cuisine of Chef Nick Sherman of Trestles and Cavalletta. If you are interested, reply to Mary at mary@munsvineyard.com for a discount code before you purchase your tickets. Also participating: Big Basin, David Bruce Winery, Charmant, Cooper-Garrod, Silver Mountain, Wrights Station. It will be a wonderful evening of excellent wine and cuisine! For more info, tickets and schedule of additional Taste of Terroir dinners this season see the Wines of the Santa Cruz Mountains website here.

May 18: Passport Day. Purchase your Passport if you don’t already have one from Wines of the Santa Cruz Mountains here and add Muns Vineyard to your itinerary. We will be open for Passport Day.

See our Events page for more events and information.

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Enjoy Muns Vineyard Wines at Home

Vineside Pickup: Pick up Your Advance Order at the Vineyard Saturdays, by Appointment or Free Local Delivery. We also ship.

If you are not able to come to one of our scheduled vineyard tastings you can pick up an order vineside, and we also offer free local delivery.

For Vineside Pickup at the vineyard: Saturdays between 11-3pm: Pick up is for advance orders only so we can fill your order before your arrival.

Free local delivery: We will deliver to your home at no charge with a min. $125 order throughout Santa Cruz to Watsonville, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and San Jose to Palo Alto. If you live just beyond this area please inquire about delivery.

We also ship.

To Order: See our Order page here. Or call Mary at 408-234-2079.

15% off on 6-11 bottles

25% off on a case

30% off on 3 cases

And you can mix your selection and order whatever you would like.

Wine Club discounts: 20% on 3 bottles, 25% on 6 bottles, 30% on a case

Pricing before discounts: Pinot Noirs $44/bottle; Syrah $34/bottle, 2010 Sparkling Rose’ of Pinot Noir $54/bottle.

For a list of our wines, see the Wines page here. To order, see our Order page here. For even better discounts, see our Wine Club page here. Or call Mary at 408-234-2079.

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Harvest 2023

Harvest 2023 starts at 5am.
A sliver moon over the vineyard just before dawn.
Picking in the fog at dawn.
Fog clouds loom over the adjacent ridge.
Dramatic!
It takes about 45 buckets to fill a half-ton bin.
Ed moving bins.
Ed moving bins heading in reverse on the Same crawler.
Early morning and we can see the Monterey peninsula in the background on the other side of the Bay.
The crew picks beautiful Pinot clusters.
Bin full of Pinot.
More Pinot!
Glowing golden leaves and Pinot.
Harvest dawn on the big hill, Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay in the distance.
Skye pup finds lots of sweet treats everywhere!
This Syrah will soon be in the bin.

The 2023 harvest started October 2, at least a full month later than usual due to delayed development throughout the year and the cool Fall (with no major heat waves, yeah!). The cool temps and longer hang-time have contributed to ripening and flavor development with no dehydration – perfect! The Pinot is beautiful and delicious. The 2023 vintage promises to be extraordinary. Harvest is continuing through October. Despite a couple of damp mornings we’ve not had significant rain and it looks like the weather should hold out for us through the month to finish bringing in all the grapes.

Looking back over the year:.

Following a long, cold and wet Spring that delayed bloom by 4-6 weeks the summer sunshine and warming temps have lit a fuse under the vines! In the course of about 10 days from the end of June into the first week of July the vines grew 2-3′, bloom finished and the clusters set. Set is also late by about a month. The crew has tucked up the long canes. And there is a thick layer of straw mulch over the floor left from mowing the heavy growth of cover crop following this winter’s rains. The vineyard is looking beautiful!

Unfortunately we did have some frost damage in the low swales early June (?), which is late for frost and another effect of the long cold Spring weather. Nevertheless, set is looking very good and the crop is looking plentiful with large, full clusters.

This year is like 2019 when we also had a very cold and rainy winter (60″+ in 2019 compared to 80″ this year, and snow in Feb., like this year), a late budbreak, bloom starting mid-June into July and a late set. In 2019 we started harvest mid-late September and we harvested for our Muns Vineyard label Oct. 4 during a cool autumn, finishing up for our winery partners late Oct. Every vintage is different, and brings its unique character to the wine in your glass.

Harvest 2022

Pink dawn over Santa Cruz, harvest day on the Big Hill.
The sky is starting to lighten, lights of Santa Cruz below.
Skye loves to participate.
This hill is steeper than it looks!
Harvest dawn. We've been picking for a couple of hours.
These clusters won't be on the vine much longer.
Moving bins at dawn.
Filling the half ton bin with luscious Pinot.
The 2022 vintage is stellar - large clusters and berries, juicy and delicious!
Ed and co-pilot Skye on the Same crawler.

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Our first day of harvest was Aug. 30 and we picked over two days for several of our winery clients. Everything was ideal, it had been a perfect growing season so far. The berries and clusters were big, beautiful, juicy and delicious. And then we all were hit with that week of 100+ degree weather! That was difficult enough as it was, but grueling to harvest in. Even starting at 4am and ending by noon it still was hot to be out there. We picked on two days during that brutal heat, and then two days the following week when it was so cold in the morning we had to wear a jacket. What a difference from one week to the next!

The good news is that the Pinot remarkably made it through that heat wave, due primarily to irrigation and canopy management. Because of the sunlight at our elevation we do not strip the leaves away from the fruit zone, but instead allow the leaves of the canopy to shade the fruit. In this and prior heat spells this has proved to save the crop, along with diligent irrigation during ripening. We didn’t get away completely without some dehydration, which you can expect in that prolonged heat, but despite it we harvested some beautiful Pinot.

We finished harvest with the Syrah on Sept. 16. We usually harvest the Syrah a week or two after the Pinot, so this was earlier than usual, but the heat precipitated ripening.

2017 also saw a prolonged heat spell just as harvest started (although the preceding winter we were deluged with 85″ of rain, which we haven’t seen in the past couple of years). Our just-released 2017 is fantastic! and the 2022 promises to be, too!

See more on our Vineyard page here.

See our YouTube Channel here for what’s happening in the vineyard – it’s like you are there! Get up close and personal with the crawler and flail mower here .

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See Muns Vineyard videos on YouTube here: Harvest, Netting, Pruning, Aerial drone view, Mowing, more .

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Contact us: info@munsvineyard.com / phone: 408-234-2079

Order on our Order Page here.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter: email info@munsvineyard.com

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