A dream project

Bella Winery has always been a special place for me. The vineyards had always been that mysterious, mountain at the top of Dry Creek Valley, a place I’d always wanted to explore and capture the essence of.

When approached by Bella Winery, it got a lot better. Periods of transition are one of my favorite things to capture. Moments that lead to our path in the future are moments to be saved and shared so we may look back to them as change inevitably comes.

TONE: Warmth to reflect the nature of the land and the people, with shadow that reflects the people and action.

STORIES

the feeling and nature of the land and vineyard
the transition of winemakers from Joe to Ryan, and the necessary process to pass on a legacy to the new generation of winemakers
Life in the cellar from their perspective. the work necessary to craft great wines with a small team

THE LAND - LILY HILL VINEYARD

Lily Hill Vineyard, the estate property of Bella Winery is a steep terraced vineyard in many areas, and the elevation offers both variation in flavor for the winemaker to craft a wine with many layers, and also the ability to grow multiple varietals that need specific soil types and sun exposure.

There is a fantastic history that draws you in here. And it sounds cheezy, but you feel apart of something that comes far before you. This hill in times past was a meeting place for travelers, embarking on the rugged journey to the coast, a 37 mile trek on brutal rocky slopes. A place to rest, eat and drink under the giant tree.

Old Vine Zinfandel that has seen everything, well before towns sprouted up to become cities, you can see the weathering and the persistence against heat and storm, and the people who tend to them seem to be in conversation with them, embracing them.

I’ve loved this place, and capturing its beauty. I wasn’t dissapointed at all.

PASSING THE TORCH

As someone who ends up spending a lot of time with winemakers, I get to ask them a lot about what its like to do their job. Winemakers are a rare breed of human being. It’s a tough job, but its a job of passion and intensity. During harvest the hours are brutal and the decisions made affect everything down the line, and the affects of those decisions often show leave their mark weeks, months or years distant, and are irreversible.

But it’s hard to throw in the towel. Great winemakers will often leave the industry, only to come back to scratch an itch that is so hard to get rid of. Winemaking calls you back. But after over 20 years of making wine at Bella Winery, Joe is finally ready to call it quits for good. And in his place Ryan a young winemaker with a talent for fine tuning the chemistry of wine preps to take over as head winemaker. Joe, a masted of making decisions on feel and touch has a full year to pass on his knowledge in the cellar and the feelings he has developed over the past few decades.

This opportunity is something rarely given to a new winemaker, usually taking over from scratch, and my goal was to capture that relationship between Veteran and Young protege through the chaos of harvest.

The further on harvest rolled, the more everyone gets tired, grumpy, bruised. But to my surprise, the more tired you get, the more you run on intuition. Ryan, a genius with chemistry began to embrace the practices of feel and trust in practice. Despite a challenging harvest with power-outages, the team seemed calm, knowing that they had nailed it. The flavors and textures were right where they needed to be, the chemistry too, was perfect. Watching Ryan get his hands dirty, the occasional smile from two men of few words was a delight.

CELLAR LIFE

Harvest is brutal. It’s an easy game to play around town during harvest to guess who walking by works in a winery. YOu’re dirty, sticky, battered, exhausted by the end of each day. Your hands are pruned and cracked, your finger tips ache. But theres love there. A challenge every day, even if repetitive. For a small winemaking team like that of Bella WInery, everyone takes on multiple roles, and the learning curve is extremely sharp. You learn so fast, and most cellar employees could spend one year and move on to make wine on their own by season’s end. I was tasked with capturing the life a cellar team lives during the harvest of 2019. I spend so many hours with them, and in that time we learned a lot about each other. Everyone works as a unit, and camaraderie builds in no time.

From before sunrise, until on many days, well after the sunsets, the team works in organized chaos. Heads down in the work in front of them, I don’t think they realize how beautiful the setting is.

As the rises, Miles is hard at work. The wine doesn’t make itself, and with a busy few weeks of head as the main tonnage of fruit will be coming into the cellar, he works with speed.