We’re Really Weird, Sorry.

If you’ve known Centralas for a while, we may have desensitized you to some eccentric, idiosyncratic, and even weird behavior.

We did this with the best intentions: we care about you and want the best for you. We envisioned the wine world we wanted you to live in, and we built that world for you.

But it’s not the real world.

The real world is… well, it’s many things, but it generally does not look out for your best interest. So it would be irresponsible for us to send you blithely forth into the dark woods of reality without preparing you for what you’ll encounter.

If your wine habit has developed or been influenced in any way by Centralas, it’s high time we sat you down and had “the talk” – the facts of wine life.

This isn’t an easy conversation for either of us, we know, but the discomfort we both feel now will be nothing compared to the chagrin you’ll experience someday soon if you think of us as “normal” and sally forth with the same expectations of every winery you meet.

Because - and it’s hard for us to admit this - we aren’t normal. We’re rather odd, actually, bordering on deviant if we’re being brutally honest.

So if you think of us as normal, you know what that says about you.

We know, we know… self-awareness is never easy. You may resist the idea that your family, I mean winery, is weird. So let us break it down for you.

1. We have a mission, and that mission isn’t about making moula.

Strange as it may sound, most folks don’t start wineries to make the world a better place. In fact most wineries don’t even really discuss the “Why?” behind their business.

If you start digging for a “Why?” out there in the real world, you may discover they don’t discuss it because there isn’t one… let alone having a reason for being that is founded on an ecological mission to protect & benefit your environment and community.

We make great wine to highlight how delicious an ecological approach to wine can be, and every decision we make is founded in how to heal and improve our world. If we’ve normalized this kind of aberrant business strategy for you, we’re very sorry.

2. We select vineyards based on their ecological excellence.

Because of the preeminence we give to where and how vineyards are farmed and to soil biology and to ecosystem integration and to awareness of irrigation practices and to chemical sprays and fertilizers used and to WHO is actually doing all this work and how they are treated, and because we choose to make wine from vineyards based on all this information (and not “Where can we find the cheapest Cab Sauv grapes?”), if you go out into the real world looking for similarly detailed information about winery vineyards with specifics about farming practices, and winemaking that is guided by this information… prepare yourself for disappointment. You will quickly discover a great yawning abyss of nothingness.

If you find anything at all, it will most likely be clichés about “distinctive terroir” or “ideal microclimate” or information about when vines were planted, how many acres, and what clones. Discussions of soil, if you find any, will be limited to “silty sand” or “calcareous clay.” Or, just as often, you’ll be redirected to information about the winemaking that happens in the winery.

And god forbid you expect to find any information about vineyard inputs anywhere, let alone on a wine label.

Please, don’t hold it against us. We’re weird. That’s what we’re trying to tell you.

3. And speaking of labels, we do a lot of abnormal things with ours.

Please don’t go out into the world looking for lists of ingredients used during winemaking, or empty bottle weights, or vineyard inputs. It just isn’t done.

Don’t embarrass yourself by asking a winemaker to tell you everything they added during winemaking. They really don’t want to tell you, and you often don’t want to know (especially if you’ve already drunk the wine).

Don’t question the rationale of that extra heavy wine bottle and if it has any correlation with quality or just with price.

Just pretend our labels and all of their information don’t exist. Your life will be easier, we promise.

4. We try to make wine that can only be made where we make it.

Look, you might as well know that our vision for wine is, by all measures, absurd. We believe that wine can be a drink that reflects the beautiful diversity of the world. We believe that wine can do this by using local, indigenous ingredients that thrive where they are grown without much human input at all. We believe in making wine that can only come from, in our case, Southern California.

The rest of the wine world that you experience when you leave the Centralas world is very happy to replicate the same kind of wine everywhere made from the same handful of varieties of non-indigenous grapes.

So when you go out, just act like a standard, monocultural French grape wine drinker. This will ensure your social success.

Never let it slip that you’ve drunk, and even quite enjoyed, wine made with wild prickly pears. Needles will scratch. Strangers will stare. Rooms will go silent. Pins will drop and be heard.

We want to spare you that kind of attention.

The truth is, unfortunately, that these are only the big ones. There are a lot of other ways in which we’re extremely weird.

We know we’ve put you at risk of social ruin by mis-calibrating your expectations in a myriad of ways by this fantasy world, this home, that we call Centralas.

We wish we could have given you a more realistic preparation for the real world. Alas, we can’t escape our own weirdness. It’s just who we are.

The other option, though, is that you don’t have to leave. Just stay here with us. Leave the real wine world for others.

And maybe, someday, our weird wine world will become a little less weird. Maybe.

with love and apologies,
Adam & Wendy