#117 WWE Series Kicks Off: Jan. 11, 2025

Our "Winter Wine Exploration" Series begins with an early look at "tank samples" of wines from the "very promising" 2024 vintage.

Ben Stamp (left), (with wife Chelsea (center) and son Wesley (right)) is the assistant winemaker at Lakewood Vineyards, where many of our white wines are made each year. The Lakewood winemaking team makes several Rieslings, among them the Riesling Dry #239, which Wine Spectator Magazine named to its list of Top 100 Wines in the World in 2020. Ben’s wife, Chelsea (pictured above) also happens to be the Boundary Breaks Business Manager

From January through March, our Winter Wine Exploration (WWE) series takes a topic from the world of wine and does a deep dive into the details to help us understand what is taking place in the glass and on your palate.

In our first installment on Jan. 11, Lakewood Assistant Winemaker Ben Stamp will be here with “tank samples” (ie, unfinished wine) from the 2024 growing season. We will be comparing those “works-in-progress” to the “finished” versions of those same styles of wine from prior vintages.

Above are two glasses of wine. The one on the left has been filtered. The one on the right is “unfinished,” that is, it has not undergone a final filtration. The process of “filtration” removes the particles from the wine that make it cloudy. But it may also remove desirable characteristics of the wine as well.

We are also going to explore how the vineyard team at Boundary Breaks collaborates with the winemaking team at Lakewood. That collaboration actually begins long before the grapes are harvested.

First, among other things, here at Boundary Breaks, we need to let the Lakewood team know just how much wine we will be asking them to make in the coming year.

That part of the collaboration involves Boundary Breaks’ Business Manager, Chelsea Stamp (Ben’s wife), who analyzes our sales trends and inventory levels to determine how many cases of each wine we should be planning to make.

Not only that, we also bring in our vineyard team to predict if the volume that our vineyards are likely to produce will be sufficient to meet our production targets (see Substack #93.)

We will be covering the entire process this Saturday Jan 11. There will be two sessions: one at 11 AM and one at 2 PM. To attend either session, you make a reservation by visiting the Events page on our website or by clicking here.

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The wines we are tasting in this first WWE will all be from Boundary Breaks. For the following four WWE sessions we will be tasting wines from around the world. And in each session, we will be tasting at least ten different wines. Dates and topics are below:

Jan. 25-26: Cabernet Sauvignon from Around the World: We sample ten Cabernet Sauvignon wines from both warm and cool climates around the world.

Feb. 8-9: Red Wine Challenge: We describe the characteristics of wine made from ten different red grapes. We then pour ten wines (made from those grapes) blind and see if you can identify them.

Feb. 22-23: Chardonnay from Around the World: We sample ten different Chardonnay wines from warm and cool climates, including some that have been aged in oak and some that have not.

Mar. 8-9: White Wine Challenge: Similar to the red wine challenge. We describe the characteristics of wine made from ten different white grapes. We then pour ten wines (made from those grapes) blind and see if you can identify them.

We hope to see you there!