Homefire of Sonoma

03/29/2026

It’s that time again.

The vines—barely awake a few weeks ago—are suddenly on. Everything is green, reaching, alive. Bud burst came and went, and now the first tiny berries are forming. Not grapes yet, but unmistakably headed there.

They’ve done this for eight years straight. Same cycle, same quiet confidence.

For the vineyard team, it’s a checkpoint. For the winemaker, it’s the starting gun.

Now we step back. Sun shows up. Water does its thing. Compost hums underneath it all.

And somehow, vines that looked completely dead not long ago are back in motion—pushing life out of old wood like it’s no big deal.

It never really gets old.

03/20/2026

A wave at the setting sun. Love this time of year.

03/19/2026

The vineyard is waking up, early. It happens every year, but it still brings out optimism, renewal and something new and shiny to look at. Some buds are just now popping open, others have already put out a few leaves, almost like the new person who walks in the room and waves. It’s so alive. You can almost see them grow, if you were a slow motion camera. And when you zoom out you see the whole vineyard adorned with little green ornaments. They all seem know when it’s time to start showing up.
Rewrite in Emily sundberg style.

03/12/2026

It’s pruning season in Dry Creek Valley.

The vines got haircuts. Old canes dropped, properly. Styled, in a way. The work that goes into it, is a little bit like art. Hundreds of decisions about what stays and what goes. What’s left is just the bare structure of the thing — which, if you think about it, is kind of everything.

There’s something about a fresh start that people really want to believe in. The idea that whatever didn’t work last year stays last year. That this time the conditions will cooperate. They won’t, obviously. And then, the weather will have its say.

But walking the rows right now, in this weird suspended quiet before bud break, it’s hard not to feel that thing. Renewal, or whatever you want to call it.

It’s close. You can just feel it.

I think about this a lot — how the vine doesn’t know it’s supposed to be anxious. It just waits. Holds the shape it was pruned into.

Anyway. It’s a good time of year to be out here.

01/14/2026

It’s a cool winter day in the vineyard. The vines stand bare, their leaves long gone, their shapes exposed against the pale sky. But beneath them, life continues. A green cover crop grows softly underfoot, sending nourishment down to roots that remember every season they’ve survived. The buds are already there—small, expectant, a little braver than they were yesterday—waiting for the moment they’re allowed to open.

Pruning comes next. It’s an intimate act, almost tender, like shaping the future with your hands. Each cut is a promise, a choice about what this vine will carry forward. The vineyard may look asleep, but it isn’t. This is its most private season—the one where everything is decided quietly, where the future gathers itself, patient and inevitable, ready to burst into bloom.

01/14/2026

12/05/2025

https://mailchi.mp/65ac82a8dfa2/holiday-offer-from-homefire-cellars

12/05/2025

10/16/2025

Every September, we open up the gate for people like you to make your own wine from the grapes you pick. It’s not a tour, it’s the start of a vintage. Find out how -