Call Today
(619) 938-4221
Grow Your Own
About the Trevi Hills Vineyard Cooperative
Most people only dream of owning a winery and living the winery lifestyle. Here at Trevi Hills that dream can become reality. You can own your own vineyard, enjoy the benefits of an operating winery, and take advantage of our skilled team to turn your grapes into wine.
Learn how to care for grapevines, produce top quality grapes, and harvest, crush and barrel - or just sit back, relax, and let us do it for you.
If you decide a vineyard is for you, our Trevi Hills Winery staff has designed a program just for Trevi Hills homeowners to create and manage your own personal vineyard, from planting to bottling. There are three parts to the program:
The Trevi Hills Way
How to Grow Your Own
Step 1:
Planting
“Trevi Hills is fortunate to have a soil – terroir in the language of winegrowing – ideally suited to produce robust and flavorful grapes. We select the finest rootstock from among those varietals favoring our terroir; then we turn and fertilize the soil, install trellising and irrigation and plant the roots which will – in three years’ time – begin producing wonderful, flavorful wine grapes.”
Step 2:
Maintaining
Sing soft arias in the evening to your grapes and leave the weeding, spraying and pruning to us; or do it all. Your choice. Our sommelier and vineyard master are always ready to share tips and procedures with you; or to bring in our crew and let you spend your time comfortably settled in an Adirondack chair supervising. Regardless, we will make sure your grape vines meet their full potential and produce robust, flavorful grapes.”
Step 3:
Harvesting
Come late summer and the clusters have reached a robust, deep purple and hang heavy from the vines. Pluck one and taste the flavor. Our winemaker tests the grapes daily until “Now” he says – it’s time to pick. All hands on deck! A hard – but fun – morning clipping clusters from the vines and hauling bins bursting with grapes up to the winery to crush. Wear some old clothes – the crusher is clamoring, the conveyor rattling, grapes flying and juice is spilling everywhere. The grapes don’t wait. But at the end of the day are many totes full of fresh squeezed juice.
Have a taste – some of it is yours.
Step 4:
Barreling and Bottling
Great wine takes time. After harvest the juice is left in large open topped containers to ferment. The skins – or must – is left with the juice to impart flavors, tannins and color. The winemaker closely monitors the fermentation cycle – adding yeast and other chemicals and flavors. This is the winemaker as artist – creating the flavors he imagines for the wine. After several weeks of fermentation, the juice is filtered to remove the must and is transferred to closed containers to continue to its transition from juice; the alcohol begins to come to the fore. As the fermentation slows, the winemaker readies the barrels, and between six and eight months after harvest the juice is transferred to oak barrels to mature. As it ages, it mellows and the flavors begin to make themselves known. In about a year the flavors begin to peak and smooth out and it is time to bottle. Soon you will be pouring and savoring that special bottle labeled just for you. Now isn’t life good?”
For more information contact
our Winery Manager, Michael.
Address:
13010 Muth Valley Road
Lakeside, California 92040
Hours:
Thur - Sun 11:00am -7:00pm
Corporate Tours Available