august 2026 boxer release
August 2026
Quady North
Wine Club Selections for THE BOXER
In July, we kept up our torrid pace in the vineyard and winery. Much fun was had, between our Lit and Libations book club (we read Like Water for Chocolate, a classic), the Hiouchi Café dinner (sold out and a wonderful experience), Method Oregon’s sparkling festival and Sunriver Uncorked. In between all this action, we had time to keep our vineyards in order and prepare for an August bottling.
What we didn’t have much time for, was to prepare for harvest.
Harvest 2026 is, indeed here. Our first scheduled pick date will be 8/17, beginning with Pinot Noir for sparkling wine for a Barrel 42 client. This is a full 10 days earlier than last year, and beats out 2021 for our earliest harvest on record. It also happens to coincide with the first day of our bottling run next week. This will have us doing the one thing that winemakers dread – bottling and pressing on the same day.
We’ll manage of course, and, in truth, we have much to be excited about this year’s harvest. Except for some triple digits last week, the summer has been warm, but not excessively hot. We’ve avoided some issues like smoke exposure, mildew and sunburn that we’ve seen in other years. Yields are generally low, which will mean for concentrated reds. However, we’ll have to watch sugars and make sure that whites and rosés are picked early enough to keep alcohols in check.
There are plenty of headwinds in our industry, as well as some attention-grabbing headlines out there. The New York Times ran an article with the headline: “Sales are so low, California wineries are burning their vineyards.” Not surprisingly, the article was a bit disingenuous. Yes, demand for wine and winegrapes is down, but most of the premium California vineyards burning grapevines were simply taking the opportunity to replant. Burning the pulled vines is standard practice. In reality, these winegrowers were doing their best to adapt to changing tastes. Since vineyards take three years to bear, it’s a good strategy to pull out the vineyard in a down market, replant with a variety that has more demand, and be back in production once demand increases again.
At Quady North, we’re doing our best to adapt as well. We’re not pulling any vineyards, but we are changing up some of our offerings and expanding our alternative formats. The Boxer Club has probably been our most successful innovation to date. Since beginning this option last year, we now have 50 members, making it our fastest growing wine club. There are other wineries putting premium wines in Bag in Box, most notably Tablas Creek in Paso Robles. However, as far as I know, we are the first true brick and mortar winery offering a wine club that features premium wines in the bag in box format. The Revino reusable bottle has also been very popular. Tasting room regulars love bringing back their used bottles. We have another three pallets of used glass ready for pickup and cleaning. This marks six pallets this year already, over 4000 bottles saved.
During a recent visit, my 27 year old daughter, Trine, announced to me that she has entered her “Sauvignon Blanc” phase. She told me that her favorite thing to do these days is to pick up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc at Trader Joe’s and watch Love Island on Peacock. This actually sounds like an amazing evening to me. While I personally might be more up for Silo or Ted Lasso, I am fully on board with doing so with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. This is our 2025 vintage of Sauvignon Blanc, newly released in box. Grown at the Four Diamonds Vineyard alongside the Applegate River by the Hedges family, we are absolutely loving this wine. Wine writer Paul Gregutt called the 2024 vintage one of his favorite wines of 2026 (so far). In contrast to New Zealand offerings, I prefer the juiciness of the Applegate fruit instead of the green notes I often see, at least in the supermarket options. Sauvignon Blanc is often one of the first whites to come in, and, I’ll actually be visiting the vineyard this afternoon, taking my first look at 2026.
2025 Sauvignon Blanc, 3L Bag in Box
Four Diamonds Vineyard, Applegate Valley
$105/$84 (Wine Club)
This is the wine that started it all. In 2010, we first started putting our Syrah 4-2,A in boxes to provide an option to small restaurants that wanted to offer our Syrah by the glass. This remains our most popular bag-in-box. This year we’ll sell over 1000 boxes, and most of those still go to local bars and restaurants.
For whites and rosés, we fill all the bags at one time, usually in the Spring, so that we can sterile filter it and avoid keeping it in a delicate state. Reds are barrel aged and are completely dry, so we can fill red wine bags throughout the year as we need to. It’s interesting because this means that batches might be slightly different, since each barrel imparts its own signature on a wine.
We make the Syrah 4-2,A by blending Syrah from several different vineyards in the Rogue and Applegate Valleys. Over the last several years, as our own vineyard has become more productive, a larger percentage of the fruit has come from our own Mae’s and Eevee’s Vineyards.
The “4-2,A” remains the ultimate comfort wine in our lineup. Rich, smooth, with a slight bit of oak-derived sweetness, it will give the same comfort to the red drinker as our Sauvignon Blanc will give to those who prefer white wines.
2024 Syrah 4-2,A
Rogue Valley
$105/$84
