California WineWorks is a Custom Winemaking Facility located in Bergen County, NJ. Our focus is on you, having fun, and helping you create your wine.
By paring down winemaking to its simplest form and demystifying the process, we hope to encourage a life-long interest in making wine and foster a sense of community among our winemakers.
We achieve this by Sourcing Premium Fruit, Practicing a Minimal Intervention Philosophy to deliver a balanced product, Providing all of the tools needed through the entire process.
July 21st , 22nd … Perfect for Chardonnays, Whites, Roses, Pinot Noirs, light Cab Francs, and many of the California and Sonoma Level Wines
August 17th, 18th , 19th, 24th, 25th and 26th … Pretty much fine for everything else, that is: Napa and Sonoma level Cabernets, Meritages, Syrahs, Cab/Syrah Blends, Zinfandels, etc.
September 1st, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th … Ditto .. Perfect for the heavier Reds, i.e. Napa Cabernets, Syrahs, etc.
We are based on the California Harvest cycle so we get most of our fruit in early to mid October.
We sell 3 different quality levels of fruit. We have branded them California, Sonoma and Napa (think good, better, best).
At each quality level, we sell quarter, half and full barrels. At the Napa level we have American and French Oak options. The entire process takes about a year to complete (think October - for the Crush & Press, to the following August/September for Bottling).