The Long Journey of Making More Moscato Wine

Having a hard time finding your favorite bottle of Electra Moscato?

While 2020 brought many surprises and challenges for all of us, it also brought unprecedented demand for our wines, and as a result, a strain on our supply across the country. You may have recently noticed some empty shelves where our angels used to be elegantly perched. We’re working around the clock to get them back up there, but unfortunately, making quality wine just takes time.

In our last newsletter, we touched on some of the reasons regarding why making more of our moscato isn’t as simple as we’d like it to be. So in case you’ve been asking yourself the question as to why we can’t just make more fast enough, here’s a brief summary!

Five years ago we set out to increase our production in order to catch up with the demand for Quady wine. These plans incorporated additional tank space, a new warehouse, and more. While each of these elements is essential to our expansion, the ability to produce larger amounts of premium Moscato starts in the vineyard.

To expand we first approached our growers to plant more Orange and Black Muscat. These varieties are not readily available and must be planted specifically for us. It takes three years for these vineyards to come into production.

Finding growers who give as much attention to the quality of the grapes they deliver to us as our winemakers do to converting these grapes into expressive wines is one of the most important factors in our success. The Madera families of grape growers that we have been working with since the 1980’s are experts in growing Orange and Black Muscat and Muscat Canelli in the Central Valley. The challenges which our growers face in producing high quality grapes require experience and attention to detail. Imagine delivering 800 tons of Orange Muscat at peak ripeness not a day early or a day late throughout the entire harvest season—that is what we require from our growers. When properly ripened in the Central Valley, Muscat Canelli smells like peaches, Orange Muscat smells like a mixture of apricots and orange blossoms. Black Muscat smells like red roses. When it’s a Black Muscat crushing night, the whole winery has a rose aroma. When we get these aromas at crush time, we know that we’ll have the opportunity to produce the premium Moscato for which we are known.

Second, because quality has been and will always continue to be of utmost importance, our winemakers have to pay close attention to ensure our new growth doesn’t change the Quady wines we love. We’ve been building a dream team here at Quady Winery, all to guarantee the love for Quady wine continues to grow and flourish. But like growing the grapes, this process also takes time.

Long story short, and a few bottles of wine later, you can see why growing our winery isn’t as simple as we’d like. But we’re thankful to our crew for navigating this new terrain year after year. And we’re grateful to our loyal fans that choose Quady wine and inspire us to achieve more than we thought possible.

Thank you to all of you for your patience as we work hard to deliver more of you favorite sweet wines! Even as we speak, our winemakers and production team are bottling our next vintage of Electra Moscato, and we can’t wait to share it with you! So hang in there, more Electra Moscato is on its way!