John Wilshire and Lynn Carle Wilshire formed WiLD Vines Wines to allow them to share their passion for wine with their friends and family. We started making wine in 2009 from grapes purchased and picked from vineyards from Temecula to Alexander Valley. Our production/fermentation facility occupied half of our garage in Murrieta, California and overflowed into the living and laundry rooms.
By 2013 we were looking for land of our own. After 9 months of searching, we moved to Sonoma County in August 2013, planted our vineyard in Spring 2014, built the winery in the summer of 2014, installed irrigation and trellis/field support in Spring of 2015. We harvested our first grapes (all 300 lbs of them) in 2017 and had our first real harvest of 1150 lbs in 2018, form which we made a “Field Blend”. This Field Blend (mainly Grenache and Sirah) won a silver medal at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair. In 2019 the vineyard was sufficiently mature to create wines from single varietals (Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir), as well as our traditional Field Blend. These are now sitting in barrels maturing and developing into what we hope will be exquisite wines!
Meanwhile, we continue to source fruit and have developed good relationships with local growers. We have won a few medals at the Sonoma County Harvest Festival, John continues to hone his craft by taking all the enology, viticulture and winemaking classes he can find and working as an intern in the Wine Laboratory at Kendall Jackson.
We hope 2020 will be a great year filled with more adventures…..and great wines!