47. Our 10th Year

We incorporated Alta Marfa on January 11th, 2016. We have learned so many things along the way, but recently we have realized that some of our first instincts, uninformed by experience, have not only remained central to us but have turned out to be even more important than we first thought. We are now lucky enough to buy fruit from two wonderful vineyards in the Davis Mountains. This started in earnest in 2024, expanded in 2025, and we hope it will continue as long as we are making wine. Alta Marfa exists because of the Davis Mountains. We set out to (a) contribute something novel to the world of wine, and (b) we saw the Davis Mountains as a place where it would be possible to do that. Finally getting a chance to work with fruit from the Davis Mountains has 100% confirmed that is a place where we can contribute something new. Another thing we felt strongly about before we began is that we wanted to have vines of our own, farmed by us. Blue Mountain Trail and Living Water Vineyard are both great, but because we don’t own them, having our livelihood dependent on the grapes they produce will always be more precarious than having our own vines. Planting and farming vineyards takes a lot of capital and a lot of time, two things we don’t have, but our intention remains, however slowly, to continue to plant our own vines and learn to farm them.

Mountain Shadows Vineyard just before bud break, March 2025. This photo was taken at the tail end of the first winter for these vines.

We received about 6 inches of snow on April 4th. The snow, along with driving winds completely froze the tender shoots that were starting to emerge at both our Grand Prix Vineyard, and Mountain Shadows. This is always so hard to watch happen. You can see in the video below that the vines recovered really nicely afterwards, as if there had never been a freeze. In the moment though, it is incredibly disheartening to see the withered baby shoots.

Above, our Grand Prix Vineyard. We finished planting this 300-vine block last summer. I was feeling so energized around the time this video was made. Running through my head: “Maybe we are finally starting to figure this out…maybe will be able to harvest the first little bit of fruit next year…I need to figure out how to plant more vines”

Mountain Shadows Vineyard looking really great in its second season was compounding my exuberance. Having our own fruit, from our own vineyards, feels like an essential part of what we hope Alta Marfa can be. The audio in this video is the audio book I was listening to while it shot the video.

Then came the most intense storm I have ever experienced. You can see the aftermath in the video above. It started with about 15 minutes of gumball size hail followed by about two inches of rain in about 15 minutes. It felt like the wind was coming directly down from the sky and hitting the ground at a 90-degree angle. I was worried the windows were going to break. I knew it was bad.

The hailstorm was very localized, but unfortunately Mountain Shadows is less than half a mile from our Grand Prix Vineyard. Both sites were hit hard, all the leaves were shredded. Worse than the shredded leaves was the damage done to the stems and what would have become the trunks of the new vines. Grape vines grow new shoots every spring and the bark of those shoots remains green and soft that whole season. During the following winter the shoots lignify and turn brown and tough and after a few seasons develop a thick bark. We had a small number of older vines that already had lignified brown trunks, the hail stones did not damage these. Most of the vines had only green tender skin and they were terribly damaged by the hail.

You can see the extensive damage in the photo above, and in the closeup below. This type of damage will affect the vines health over the long term, so almost all of these vines will need to be cut down to the ground and regrown from there.

Closeup of the hail damage at Mountain Shadows.

Technically I think these are tortoises. I drive on the highway for about 15 miles every day in between our house and town. This year during that trip I’ve helped 7 or 8 of these guys cross safely. It’s a very special part of my day I call “Turtle Time”.

Our first harvest day of 2025 was this beautiful Gewurztraminer at Kubacak Vineyards in the Texas High Plains. This vineyard is about 45 minutes from Lubbock and about 5 hours from Marfa.

A great morning view of Blue Mountain (7,287’) from the Montepulciano block at Living Water Vineyard. This photo was taken on the first day of September.

Another view of Blue Mountain, peeking out from behind the hill at Blue Mountain Trail Vineyard.

Beautiful Mourvèdre at Blue Mountain Trail Vineyard in the Davis Mountains. Blue Mountain Trail Vineyard is the oldest producing vineyard in the Davis Mountains. It was planted in 2011 and is farmed wonderfully by Adam White.

Sunrise Montepulciano harvest - Montepulciano from Living Water Vineyard has become one of our favorite varieties in the Davis Mountains. 2025 was our 4th time harvesting this variety, and this fall we will be releasing the first wine to the general public, Incognito 2023. Our wine club members will be receiving this wine in a few weeks. I think those that get to try this wine later this month will agree with me that the 2023 Incognito might be our first wine that really delivers on what we felt the Davis Mountains promised back in 2016 when we first began this journey. For those of you doing the math, we did make a 2022 Living Water Montepulciano, however there was only 21 cases, and it was only sold here in Marfa.

Another beautiful Montepulciano cluster on the day of harvest.

One of my oldest friends, Alan Johnson, aka @Maklvane, has created the art for our labels since we began. As we’ve grown, the labels have evolved with us. Alta Marfa would not be what it is without Alan’s art and his work.

I had a blowout on the trailer on the way home from the last pick of the season. Pretty lucky considering I was only 15 minutes from home, and I got to watch the sunset while I changed the tire. A friend was passing by and stopped to help.