The season of giving has arrived! Looking for the perfect gift for friends, family, coworkers and clients? We’ve got you covered with the Olema Holiday Gift Collection. Wine gifts for every palate, at every price point, and all with shipping included.
Read on for our recommendations on what to gift this year—and use code OLEMAGIFTS to save 15% on your gift order this year!
For your bestie – Olema Double Bubbles Duo
Individually, the Olema sparkling wines are festive and fun; together, they’re the ultimate celebratory pair. Both hail from France’s Loire Valley and are made in the traditional champagne method, with secondary fermentation occuring in each bottle to result in perfect effervescence in every sip. Pair with holiday hors d’oeuvres or your New Year’s caviar.
For the coworkers – Olema Essentials Duo
Refreshing, lively Côtes de Provence rosé and complex, robust Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon: it’s a duo that checks every box for your wine-loving coworker (or even the boss). Plus, the numbers don’t lie: both of these wines receive 90+ reviews year after year.
For the Francophile – Olema Best of France Duo
We have the distinct pleasure to make multiple wines from France each year, flying our winemakers across the pond to join in on the harvest and blending in both Côtes de Provence in southern France and the Loire Valley, north of Bordeaux. The result are wines that nod to the old world style while delivering outstanding value and drinkability here in the US. Cin cin!
For your in-laws – Olema Core Four
Sometimes the best gifts are the ones that can be opened—and enjoyed— during the family White Elephant party. With a bottle each of Olema Rosé, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, there’s something for everyone… even the most particular names on your nice list.
Harvest 2022 for Olema Wines is coming to a close—so we wanted to take you behind the scenes and into the cellar for a peek at a day in the life of Olema harvest. It starts in the vineyard…
5:00 am
We start many harvest days, and days leading up to harvest, with crisp early mornings at the vineyards. Beginning in late summer, we’re sampling grapes—picking a representative sample of grapes and clsuters to bring them back to the winery to test sugar levels and acidity to determine when it’s time to pick. Actual picking days may start even earlier, with night picks beginning anytime between 11pm and 3am to get the fruit back to the winery bright and early.
7:00 am
Time for fruit processing at the winery! In other words, this is the first step in the winemaking process, moving the grapes from their picking bins, over the sorting table, into the destemmer, and into a fermentation tank.
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
After fruit processing, our harvest mornings are filled up with pumpovers, measuring fermentations to test their sugar levels and see how far along the fermentation process they are, and cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning!
Pumpovers, just as the name suggests, mean pumping the juice from the bottom of the tank and pour it back over the top of the fermenter. This extracts flavor and tannins from the grape skins, imparting beautiful complexity into the wine.
12:00 pm – Lunch!
…Just kidding, we eat more than just grapes (but wine grapes ARE particularly delicious…)
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Afternoons are spent with more pumpovers, pressing, digging out tanks, and cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning to wrap up work for the day ahead! Because we source from vineyards all around Sonoma County and have three different varietals (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon), we might have some lots of grapes coming in the door while others are midway through fermentation and others are fully fermented and ready to be drained out of tank. The wine goes into barrel, and we get to dig all the pommace (fermented grape skins) out of the tank and clean it thoroughly to get it ready for the next lot of wine. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it!
5:00 pm
Dinner as a crew to toast to a great day and watch a beautiful Wine Country sunset as we prepare for the next day ahead.
With some late summer heat waves in California to kick off September and the 2022 Olema harvest in full swing, we’re looking ahead to some beautiful fall weather — and all the flavors that come with it. So we’ve gathered a few of our favorite fall recipes from around the web. What wines pair best with fall flavors? We’ve got you covered with wine recommendations for fall below.
Autumn Chopped Salad from Espresso & Cream with the Sonoma County Chardonnay or Olema Rosé Reserve. This salad captures the flavors of fall in a delicious, filling dish. The pear and bacon complement the Sonoma County Chardonnay beautifully while the vinaigrette and cranberries add a tartness that contrasts the wine’s smoothness. Or for a more complementary pairing, the Olema Reserve Rosé creates cranberry bliss with the salad.
Serious Eats Butternut Squash Risotto + Olema Reserve Chardonnay. Butternut squash is one of our go-to ingredients to match the richness of the Reserve Chardonnay. This, plus the Golden Delicious apple and savory miso in the recipe make this a perfect complementary pairing: the flavors in the wine perfectly match the flavors in the dish. Tip: the recipe calls for a half cup of white wine– a great role for a glass of your open bottle of Reserve Chardonnay if you can spare it; if not, go for 4 oz of the Sonoma County Chardonnay.
Nothing beats a roast chicken over a pan of mouth-watering veggies. Don’t miss the Change-Your-Life Chicken from the Lazy Genius paired with the Olema Pinot Noir. There’s just something about roast chicken and Pinot Noir. The wine’s acidity cuts through the richness of the chicken, while the dish’s fat softens the Pinot Noir’s tannins and creates blissful harmony on the palate. Pair with a crackling fireplace.
Slow Cooker Red Wine Sunday Ragù Pasta from Half-Baked Harvest + Olema Cabernet Sauvignon. This crowd-pleasing dish is rich and savory, making for a beautiful pairing with the Olema Cabernet Sauvignon (which also adds lovely flavor to the dish itself, if you have a second bottle on hand– the recipe calls for 1 ¼ cup dry red wine, or about two glasses). Beef short ribs cooked in any form pair wonderfully with the Olema Cabernet Sauvignon, with fattiness that cuts through the wine’s tannins. The wine’s bold fruit notes can stand up to the savoriness in the dish– all together, it’s a match made in fall-flavor heaven.
