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Friday 11am - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm Sunday 11am - 5pm

https://www.lindenvineyards.com/

Linden Vineyards, 3708 Harrels Corner Road, Linden, VA (2026)

09/02/2026

Unveiling the Personality of Vintage 2026. Linden started harvest on Monday, August 31. Sauvignon Blanc was first up to bat. What is typically a two-day pick was accomplished in just one day: the result of the April 21 frost. The Avenius Vineyard produced about 50% of normal. Hardscrabble was about 25% of normal.

But what really matters is that we get our first glimpse into the style and personality of the vintage. The first words that come to mind are “mineral, tension, refreshing, and cleansing”. Judging from tasting the grapes and the juice, along with the sugar and acid analysis, we can expect lower alcohol and some classic “Sauvy” bracing acidity. I hope the Chesapeake has a good oyster crop in a couple years.

Chardonnay will follow on Labor Day Monday. The grapes could use a few more days of sun along with some cooler nights and fresher dew points. So far it looks as though the Chardonnays could follow suit as to style.

08/28/2026

The Courage to do Nothing. It's looking like harvest will start next week. The vines are healthy. Too healthy in some cases. The rains and heat of August have stimulated exuberant vine growth. This is not desirable. The vines should be focusing on ripening grapes, not producing new leaves. In an attempt to slow them down we turned to our winemaking philosophy of doing nothing. I'll explain.

The level of control in winemaking has been debated ever since the advent of modern science. In the 1980s we embraced cutting edge winemaking methods, but over the decades we have weaned ourselves from most interventions. In the cellar we slowly landed on the best path to express terroir in our wines by doing as little as possible. It means not adding stuff from a bag or a bottle (acids, tannins, enzymes, fining agents). It means trusting the wines even when they go in a direction that may seem undesirable. Often the wines require years of aging before they gather themselves and show their best. The courage to do nothing requires time and patience.

In the vineyard we remained more controlling: positioning shoots, removing leaves, hedging excessive growth. Mowing, spraying, weeding made for a manicured vineyard. But climate change forced us to rethink everything we do in the vineyard. This year has been a vineyard management challenge. Frost left some vines with no grapes and weakened structure. Then record heat sunburned exposed clusters. August rains stimulated late season shoot growth.

In arid regions vineyards are irrigated. In wetter regions we occasionally try to evacuate water out of the soil by allowing weeds, grass, cover crops and vines to grow without intervention. It's a jungle out there and it is intentional. The goal is to build a big biomass that can suck (transpire) the water out of the soil.

The vineyard does not look pretty. It's a bit embarrassing, but it's the best way to slow the vines down and get them back into balance. Now that the soils are beginning to dry out we are returning to some hedging, but with caution as next week could bring record heat and the clusters can't be too exposed. We need autumn to make an appearance.

08/21/2026

Preparing. Today was our first day for grape sampling and lab tests. Vintage 2026 is now being analyzed, examined, and scrutinized. In the morning samples of grapes from Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay were methodically taken: ten grapes from 15 vines of each variety. Shari Avenius then squeezes the juice out of each grape sample and runs lab work on the acidity and sugar levels. By the way, this is her 36th vintage operating Linden’s lab. We then do organoleptic evaluations of the juice. This is a fancy way of saying that we smell and taste the juice, and then take notes.

Looks like another early harvest, at least for Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. We were hoping that the recent rains would slow ripening so that the vines would take advantage of cooler weather. But our estimate is now a start date of September 1. It would be preferable to avoid an August harvest as I am in climate change denial, which is a stage of grieving.

August has been fairly tropical with heat, humidity, and storms. The rain is keeping sugar levels aka potential alcohols) down, which is a relief after so many high alcohol vintages. That could change somewhat if we get a dry, windy, low humidity stretch next week. Acidities are lower than usual. This will probably force our “picking” hand as there is nothing less appealing than a flabby Sauvignon Blanc.

Right now the forecast for next week looks promising. We’ll see if that comes to fruition.

08/14/2026

The 2026 Red Wine Pivot. Not the August we were hoping for. Just as the vines were transitioning from growing leaves to ripening grapes it rained. A lot. This stimulated new green growth at the expense of ripening.

I'm not so worried about the whites. In fact it could be a blessing as a delay in ripening can push harvest into the sweet spot of mid- to late-September when the nights are cool and the days are bright and clement. But the reds are of concern. Veraison (color change) is uneven. Some clusters are already purple and others still green. We anticipated this in the spring when bud break was uneven and sporadic. This was most likely due to the very cold winter along with the depletion of carbohydrates by the gluttonous sucking of the invasive Spotted Lanternfly. August rains exacerbated the situation. The vines are confused and have reverted back to a vegetative cycle instead of concentrating on ripening.

Red wine quality is defined by the suppleness and elegance of tannins. The Holy Grail of big, long-lived red wines is a massive but silky tannin structure. Tannins come mostly from grape skins. Synchronistic maturity is a key to achieving this Holy Grail. The grapes should ripen uniformly so that all the grape skin tannins are at peak maturity.

Well, frankly that's not going to happen this year. But it is not all doom and gloom. It is reality. We are farmers and the best farmers are stoics. This is the hand we were dealt and we will still make some memorable red wines. We approach our craft with intuition. If the skin tannins are less ideal, we can ease back on extraction during fermentation. Cooler fermentation temperatures, less movements, and less time in contact with the skins. This emphasizes fruit and freshness rather than ponderous structure and mouth-coating tannins.

So as we prepare and plan for vintage 2026 we look for palate guidance not from Bordeaux or Napa, but from Burgundy and Beaujolais: wines that always please with fruit and acidity rather than tannins and oak. So many wines to learn from and so little time.

08/04/2026

“Every time I open a bottle of wine, it is an amazing trip somewhere.”
- José Andrés
José Andrés

08/02/2026

Harvest and Crush Tour and Tasting. Our season long work in the vineyard culminates with an intense burst of energy in the fall. The long dormant cellar awakens, and equipment hums. From September 11 to October 11, we will offer a special 11:00 tour of the crush pad and cellars. Crush is the winemaking term for all the activity from picking the grapes to extracting the juice and starting fermentation.

This is your opportunity to see up close how wine is made. Our educational tour begins in the vineyard and then continues on the crush pad and into the cellar. You'll be able to taste (grapes, juice, fermenting wine), see (harvest or crush, depending on the day), and smell (fermentation aromas are intoxicating). We'll finish the tour with our comparative wine tasting in the tasting room. As 2026 marks Linden's 40th harvest, we'll be including lots of stories from the past.

Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 11 am
$50 per person

By reservation only: https://www.exploretock.com/lindenvineyards/experience/617433/harvest-and-crush-tour-and-tasting-2026?date=2026-09-11&size=2&time=12%3A00

07/30/2026

Where Things Stand. The vine's vegetative cycle is slowing and ripening has begun. During this stage (called veraison) there is a shift both with the vines and the winegrowers.

In the vineyard potential yields have been set, but wine style and quality remain unknown. It is no secret that it has been a challenging growing season. There have been setbacks. Yields are down due to the infamous April 21 frost. Our Chardonnay, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc took the biggest hit. Cool temperatures during late May flowering further reduced fertilization in our Chardonnay making for small, lighter clusters. Last month's heat wave resulted in some sun burned grapes, most of which have now dried up. A week of cool drizzle followed, giving us angst about disease outbreaks (fortunately no mildew or black rot appeared). Then there was the smoke that forced us inside leaving the vines to fend for themselves. Turns out the vines are more resilient than we are.

In fact the vines look awfully healthy. They've done their work and we have done ours and now the waiting game starts. The weather over the next two months will determine the style and quality of the wine. What we want is dry and cool. Dry so as to slow down the vine's desire to grow more leaves and to transfer that energy to ripening grapes. Cool, especially in September, makes the best wines. The whites will have more energy with crisp, mineral acidity. Slow ripening red grapes retain freshness, aromas and most importantly supple tannins.

While the weather months down the road is impossible to predict, we still hold out for something special. In the meantime our work shifts from vineyard to cellar: bottling (to make room for vintage 2026), cleaning and maintenance of crush and harvest equipment, and a bit of R&R.

07/27/2026

Barrels Available. After the frost in April we are anticipating low yields at harvest. We are bottling next week and will have barrels available for sale. If you would like a barrel of your own, please email us at [email protected]. $100 each and pick up before Labor Day.

07/17/2026

Native Cover Crops*: Rabbitfoot Clover. Rabbitfoot clover is the final native cover crop to spread under the vines. It is flowering now. The flowers look like small fluffy rabbit’s feet. Its growth characteristics are similar to my all time favorite Black Medic, except that it grows a bit taller (a disadvantage as it can grow up into the cluster zone), and it spreads slowly. Its advantage is that it is one of the very few late season cover crops to emerge and continue through the rest of the summer.

We’ve been gathering its seed heads and hand spreading them, trying to encourage a more diverse population. But this has only been modestly successful at best.

* Native Cover Crops: formerly considered weeds, Jim Law documents the results of 20 years of nurturing low growing ground covers in the vineyard.

07/09/2026

New Summer Tasting. The growing season has an enormous impact on our wine style. With the summer heat upon us, we are switching our tasting again to match the season. We are celebrating vintage variation with a comparison of three pairs of wines from different vintages. We will compare the classic 2020 vintage to the powerful 2023 with Village Chardonnays, the 2022 and 2023 Avenius Sauvignon Blancs, and the 2021 and 2023 Clarets. The 2023 Claret is a new release, the first red of the highly anticipated 2023 vintage.

Reservations recommended, walk-ins welcome as space allows.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 11-5pm.

https://www.exploretock.com/lindenvineyards/

Linden Vineyards

09/02/2026

08/28/2026

08/21/2026

08/14/2026

08/04/2026

08/02/2026

07/30/2026

07/27/2026

07/17/2026

07/09/2026

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