From the Winery: Peterson Winery has been producing wine in Dry Creek Valley for 30 years and, like most wineries in the Valley, produces Zinfandel as well as other wines. Yet a closer look shows that is where the similarities end.

Owner Fred Peterson is an iconoclast with an old-world winemaking philosophy and a reverence for sustainable farming. The Peterson approach is to capture the essence of vintage and vineyard—a philosophy they call Zero Manipulation—with low tech, yet high touch winemaking techniques to produce wines of a place, wines with soul.

The evolution of Peterson wines and winemaking accelerated when Fred’s son Jamie became assistant winemaker in the summer of 2002. In 2006, after moving from the tiny red barn on Lytton Springs to Timber Crest Farms, Jamie was given the overall responsibilities as winemaker. As a winegrowing team, Fred and Jamie assess the grapes from each vineyard and vintage as the season progresses, evaluating how the weather, soil and site are interacting for the particular vintage.

At Peterson winery, the winemaking process begins while the grapes are still on the vines. Zero Manipulation is a discipline the Petersons follow to capture the character and balance inherent in the grapes. Zero Manipulation means using the most gentle, traditional winemaking practices possible to maximize the flavors, aromatics and texture of the wines. Fred and Jamie celebrate vintage differences and don’t tweak or homogenize the wine to obtain consistency of flavors, a common practice in mass-market wineries. For Fred and Jamie, Peterson Winery is all about the wines. But if you look—and drink—a little deeper, you’ll appreciate the heart and soul that goes into every bottle.

At Peterson, our wines are made in the vineyard. In addition to sourcing fruit from local farmer friends, we grow 14 varietals on our Bradford Mountain Estate Vineyard.

Making great wines is all about balance.

It starts in the vineyards, where we try to achieve a balance from bud break in the spring until the grapes are picked in the fall. The canopy, crop load, sun exposure, hang time, and hundreds of other details involved in managing a vineyard all must be considered to achieve the right balance.

Once the grapes are picked, it becomes the winemaker’s responsibility to continue the balancing act in the cellar. All the variables that Mother Nature gave us during the growing season need to be considered because they affect the grapes and the approach to winemaking for that vintage. If you keep a good handle on the growing conditions of the season, you have fewer preconceived notions of what the wine should taste like because you’ve already been dealing with all the realities of that vintage.

With the winemaking underway, now the balancing act involves questions like how much oak to achieve the proper intensity in the wine,what type of oak best enhances the flavors in this wine, how often should this wine be racked, or does this wine need blending?

At Peterson Winery we practice the philosophy of Zero Manipulation. Our definition of Zero Manipulation is using the gentlest winemaking techniques possible to maximize flavors, aromatics and the original essence of the wine. “Every time you do something to a wine, you take out a little of what you started with,” says Fred Peterson. “The less you do in the course of a wine’s tenure in the cellar, the more of the grape’s and vineyard’s essence you’ll have to bottle.”

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For all orders over $50, we offer free local delivery within a 10 mile radius of each respective Shop in Morris and West Hartford.

We ship wine to many states. UPS Ground is our preferred third party carrier.