By Jasmine Hirsch, November 2025
I hope you’re enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, full of family, food and of course, great wine. The star of our Thanksgiving meal was a 2004 Giuseppe Mascarello Barolo. We mostly drink American wines to celebrate this most American of holidays, but the Barolo stole the show yesterday.
My father has always loved Barolo and the grape that makes it, Nebbiolo. In the 1990s he even threatened to plant Nebbiolo at Hirsch, in the field where we now grow Chardonnay. Luckily, his old friend Burt Williams of Williams-Selyem told him he was crazy and that Nebbiolo belongs in Piedmont. Burt urged him to plant Chardonnay instead. My dad always said that with the money he saved by not planting Nebbiolo, he was able to buy a lot of Barolo.
Speaking of Chardonnay, about a month ago, we held our now-annual library tasting for our production and sales teams at Hirsch. A standout was the 2006 Hirsch Estate Chardonnay – made from the very field that was nearly Nebbiolo. It has aged into a rich and intoxicating example of mature Chardonnay, a stunning wine. The soil of that vineyard is remarkable; I believe you could plant almost any grape there and it would produce fantastic wine. One wonders what 2006 Hirsch Nebbiolo might taste like…
We also opened a vertical of the East Ridge and West Ridge Pinot Noirs, along with several vintages of the San Andreas and Bohan-Dillon Pinots. The lineup spanned 2006 to 2016, giving us a chance to reflect on the perspectives of the winemakers we’ve been honored to work with over the years. Certain bottles carried vivid memories: the weather of that season, a story from harvest, or the personality of the winemaker.
Tasting the 2015s, I recalled a story my dad told me about our fruit customer Ehren Jordan of Failla, who visited just before the harvest. Looking at the vines, he asked if they’d already been picked – the yields were that low and the vines that bare. A funny story now; certainly less so at the time. That was a painful year, but the wines it produced are among our most singular.
Wine is time. It can remind us of historical events from that vintage, the people who made it, or something that happened in our own lives. A great bottle is a time capsule, carrying us back to a particular moment.
I hope our wines – indeed any wine – can offer you these transportive, contemplative experiences. Some bottles invite that kind of reflection; others are simply for pleasure and guzzling (an equally important purpose!).
I look forward to sharing our library release with you next week. The release letter will include more thoughts on the individual wines and the memories they evoked.
Wishing you the happiest of holidays,
Jasmine Hirsch
Winemaker & GM