Say When
is a moment —
Say When started in 2013. Not long after we met, Rachel was preparing to bottle the first wine of her own — a humble barrel of Pinot Noir made on the side while working full time as an assistant winemaker. While proud of the wine about to be put into the bottle, everything outside of the bottle still needed to be worked out. That's when Michel jumped in.
After several long distance phone calls that unintentionally turned into creative brainstorms, we created 300 unique labels using the actual wine as our medium and hand numbered each bottle. We then scanned each label onto the website and created a gallery that allowed people to comment with a story or tasting note on their individually numbered bottle. Michel helped turn that first barrel of wine into a business and we have been collaborating together ever since.
We are a hands on winery. We make all of our wines ourselves in a shared winery space in Lompoc CA. Rachel focuses on the physical winemaking, but every decision in the winery is made together.
We source our grapes from vineyards in the Central Coast of California, allowing us to work with a wide range of varietals and we continue to challenge and push our winemaking in new directions (case in point, our Weird Parties label was born out of a desire to do just that). As of 2020 all of our vineyard sources are farmed using Organic, Biodynamic, or Regenerative Organic+ practices.
Every wine is made with a gentle hand; we utilize sulfur as a preserving agent but no other additions are made to the wines. Everything undergoes native fermentation, meaning that no commercial yeasts or nutrients are added.
Between harvests you'll find us two hours south in Los Angeles, where we balance our lives between the city and our winery, growing our small business so we can continue doing what we love.
