The Story Behind Carnala : Organically Farmed Carignan

As we farm our young vine­yard, ped­dle our new wines and par­ent two teenaged daugh­ters this quote says it all. We got into the wine world long before we stum­bled into par­ent­ing, and we’ve found them to be equal­ly chal­leng­ing, def­i­nite­ly painful in the process, and incred­i­bly rewarding.

The name and label have every­thing to do with our daugh­ters, two impres­sive humans we’ve poured our heart and soul into and delight­ed in watch­ing them mature and grow. Our girls share many com­mon inter­ests and tal­ents; Hon­est­ly, we raised bi-lin­gual mer­maids. They both attend­ed a local Span­ish immer­sion school, they surf, swim and play water polo and if ever they’re dragged too far from water they’re gills dry out. Best of all, they’re friends, and the wine’s name ​“Car­nala” has Spanish/​Latin roots as a slang term mean­ing ​“sis­ter” or ​“girl­friend”. Carig­nan orig­i­nat­ed in Spain but has long been asso­ci­at­ed with France’s Langue­doc-Rous­sil­lon region. While trav­el­ing through Spain and the Canary Islands when the girls were lit­tle, they fell in love with two bright­ly col­ored Fla­men­co cos­tumes for danc­ing, com­plete with big Span­ish fans. We snapped a pic­ture of them pos­ing in their out­fits in Spain and put it on the 2011 hol­i­day card and prompt­ly for­got about it until this year. The orig­i­nal pic­ture (shown here) was re-designed by my own sis­ter, our graph­ic design artist, Chelsea Smith, with gold metal­lic ink.