Organic vs. Conventional Farming

Organic vs. Conventional Farming

Organic grape and wine farming: Thanks to the support from all of our Hydeout Sonoma vineyard clients, we are a 100% organic farming operation. As this debate continues, I invite you to take an in-depth look at the differences between conventional and organic. Let's...

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Dysfunctional Family Chickens

Dysfunctional Family Chickens

Here at the Hydeout, we have many projects going on around the property.The latest addition being a chicken coop! Many friends in Sonoma have backyard chicken coops and we thought it would be great to join in on the fun. Raising chickens on property is part of a...

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Wine Country in the Fall: Grape Harvest & Olive Oil

Wine Country in the Fall: Grape Harvest & Olive Oil

The last ton of grapes is safely in the winery, and in celebration of the end of the 2019 harvest Hydeout Sonoma hosted a BBQ lunch for the whole hard-working winery team. The joke is that 'it takes a lot of beer to make good wine', and in this case, yes, guilty as...

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Sonoma Barn Owls and social tidbits…

Sonoma Barn Owls and social tidbits…

Sonoma Barn Owls and social tidbits...we've lost many grapevines, three years in a row, to damaging gophers. The gopher population is out of whack. Hard to say why? Maybe not enough snakes? We don't want to use poison or traps, so what's the better option? Owls! (not...

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Before harvest, let’s bottle some wine…

Before harvest, let’s bottle some wine…

As the clock clicks down to another harvest, it's time to make some room in the winery. Here are a series of short videos and time lapses of our most recent bottling of Dysfunctional Family 2017 "Red Blend".  Starting with some barrels full of the wine: Seven short...

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You’re interrupting my Sonoma summer…for this?

You’re interrupting my Sonoma summer…for this?

I will soon be sharing images of the re-construction of an iconic Cabernet vineyard in the next blog post. But while we wait for the newly planted vines to grow, please enjoy this short sampling... This is the project we've been working on all summer, with old vine...

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Ganau…it’s Italian for cork!

Ganau…it’s Italian for cork!

For over 20 vintages, I have been a loyal customer of Ganau America, a cork company based in Italy, with natural cork sourced from Sardinia and Portugal. Join me on a pictorial journey through their impressive Sonoma processing facility... The cork arrives in bundles...

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2019 wine grape season is (almost) a nightmare so far…

2019 wine grape season is (almost) a nightmare so far…

Update - May 29th, 2019 - Republishing this blog post with more current information - the rain is over, the sun has arrived, and the vineyards have dried out enough to rush labor and tractors into the vineyards. As of today, it looks like we avoided most of the...

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Hope for the future of wine and food

Hope for the future of wine and food

From my view on the Advisory Board of the Sonoma Valley High School Agri-Tech Academy, I get a first-row seat to watch some of our best and brightest explore their love of farming and plan for their (and our) wine and food futures. Pictures are worth a thousand words,...

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Sonoma Harvest 2018 – Part 2 “The Day”

Sonoma Harvest 2018 – Part 2 “The Day”

Sonoma Harvest, Part 1, "The Night" featured some harvests at night. As the sun rose and fruit was loaded onto the trucks, here are some daytime images of a few of our client's harvests. And check out the winery videos and fermentation chemistry at the end. In all of...

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Sonoma Harvest 2018 – Part 1 “The Night”

Sonoma Harvest 2018 – Part 1 “The Night”

Here is your Sunday Morning just before brunch wine podcast. While you were sleeping, Sonoma Valley was hard at work harvesting wine grapes at night. You might ask, "hey Ken, what's it like to prepare for a night harvest?" I'll tell you...Are the grapes ready?, where...

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Dysfunctional Family Winery grand debut…

Dysfunctional Family Winery grand debut…

On a gorgeous Sonoma evening, Dysfunctional Family Winery made its official and exceptionally grand public debut. The town mayor sang the star bangled banner (no, she did not). The Wine Spectator immediately awarded 100-points and declared it the 'wine of the century'...

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Vacation rentals are a fixture of wine country

Vacation rentals are a fixture of wine country

Focusing on vacation rentals is a bit afield from our usual topic - Sonoma grapes and wine. It's all well and good to grow great grapes, make delicious wine, and build beautiful wineries. But we'd better have customers to enjoy it all. Many growers and winemakers rely...

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