On Le Cuvier

Le Cuvier is indeed a very small winery with current annual production of just under 4,000 cases. Our maximum allowable size by virtue of the wisdom of County Regulations is just 5,000 cases. That means that even as we grow to full capacity, we are going to remain committed to our Elliptical Members & the kind, curious souls who deign to visit our tasting room.

Unfortunately, one of the consistently troublesome things we do at Le Cuvier is insist on an extraordinarily long 3-year minimum barrel aging of Le Cuvier wines. Many of our wines are barrel aged longer—much longer— & the unusual character we gain via this process cannot be rushed without loss of that je ne sais quoi that makes our wines unique. The consequence of this long, long time in barrel is that it renders accurate planning a delusional process at best.

And, oh yes, another bit of stupidity is that for each additional year we stay in barrel we lose about 8% of our wine to evaporation—meaning that by the time we slide the wine into bottles, we've lost roughly a quarter of it in the form of the proverbial "angels' share"—fumes to be enjoyed by those besotted winged beings that can be heard giggling in the darkened corners of our barrel room.

To summarize the point a bit more briefly; Le Cuvier wines can be mercurial in their availability, as impossible to predict as the weather (meaning not entirely unfathomable, but not quite reliably able to be ascertained). To enjoy them is to accept this quirk of fate, as their limitations are a side effect of their exceptional character.