10/26/2025
The Last Press — Harvest 2025
If you want to understand a winery, go to the cellar.
The last press feels like a closing chapter—but the work lives on in the barrels and eventually in the bottle. Winemaking doesn’t end when the bottle is sold, but when it’s opened and shared. Wine demands as much care in aging as it does on the day it leaves the press.
I didn’t learn this from a book or a consulting firm. I learned it beside my father, Harry “Red” Coturri, who learned it from his father Enrico Coturri, born in Lucca, Italy. They didn’t teach technique first—they taught responsibility. They taught that work is something you pass down in your hands, not your words.
So I kept going. I learned to listen—to fruit, to weather, to wood—long before I ever listened to opinion. Nothing about this is staged. The cellar will tell you what kind of winemaker you are. It doesn’t care about trends or clever language. It only cares if you show up and do the work.
Harvest doesn’t end in the vineyard. It ends here. Hands stained. Boards soaked. Metal under strain. The air changes in a press room—you feel weight and silence together. If you rush, the wine will tell on you. If you cut corners, the wine will carry it. Discipline is visible. So is laziness.
We pressed the last ferment today. The sound changes on the final day—shorter pushes, slower creaks, a finish you don’t just hear, you feel. Claude, my son, was here with me—not for a photograph, but because you cannot inherit this without earning it. Legacy isn’t DNA. Legacy is repetition.
I don’t chase pretty pictures. I don’t care about being fashionable. I care about honesty. Skins. Seeds. Gravity. Time. Work. These are the tools. They were enough for my father. They were enough for my grandfather. They are still enough now.
This isn’t a story about wine. This is a story about work—and work outlives the people who do it.
For Harry “Red” Coturri — and the hands who came before us.
💛T
