What was the thing that pushed you over the edge to order Peony Lane Wine?

The Clean Wine Contradiction: Why I Use the Term (And How You Should Evaluate It) I need to address something uncomfortable: I market myself as "clean wine," and that term has been completely bastardized. Anyone can slap "clean wine," "low intervention," or even "natural wine" on their label. There's zero regulation about these terms in the USA and Companies are exploiting wine's unique regulatory gap. Alcohol is the only major beverage category that doesn't require ingredient lists. That means many producers sell premium-priced "clean" wine while disparaging conventional producers. They're making bank off consumer anxiety about mysterious additives, often while their own wines come from the same bulk market they're supposedly disrupting. How the Wine World Deals With It (Spoiler: They Don't) There are people calling out this BS, but there's no grand solution in sight. The regulatory gaps that allow this nonsense also exist for legitimate reasons - wine isn't a manufactured product with consistent inputs year after year. Requiring detailed ingredient labels would crush small producers under bureaucratic burden. Many winemaking aids don't actually stay in the finished wine - do those go on the label? And ingredients lists won't tell you if the producer used pesticides anyway. Meanwhile, there's a thriving "black market" where anyone can buy bulk wine, slap their own label on it, and compete aggressively because they don't have vineyards to maintain. Unless you want government agents inspecting every winery (and trust me, alcohol regulation is burdensome enough), this wild west situation isn't changing anytime soon. My Solution: Don't Trust, Verify So why do I still use the term "clean wine"? Because when done right, it means something. But you can't rely on the label to tell you what that is. Here's my two-part litmus test for evaluating any wine, including mine: 1. Meet the Producer (Or Get As Close As Possible) High-quality wine producers are transparent because they're proud of what they do. They want to tell you about their vineyard, the growing season, why their location creates amazing terroir. They geek out over details. If a producer is vague about where their wine comes from, that's your red flag. Marketing companies selling private label wine keep things mysteriously simple. Ask questions. Where are the grapes grown? Who makes the wine? What's their approach to vineyard management? The answers (or lack thereof) will tell you everything. 2. Live in a "Don't Trust, Verify" World After you've done your homework, there are only two questions that matter: Do I like the wine? How do I feel afterward? That's it. That's your quality control. Your body knows the difference between wine that's been manipulated to death and wine that's been crafted with care. Some people get headaches from certain sulfites. Others react poorly to high tannin manipulation. The proof is in the bottle

The only thing stopping the USA from succumbing like the UK is guns and people like you drinking the Blood of Tyrants (Peony Lane🍷). Keep going💪

Acidity is the backbone structure in wine. Warm days build sugar while cool nights preserve the acid, and the huge day-to-night temperature shifts you can only find at elevation are what lock in the uniqueness of Colorado wine. They let grapes ripen fully without losing their edge.

Saturday Night Decisions. Syrah or Tempranillo?

Stop aging cheap wine. That wine was made with enough preservatives to make last forever, not age gracefully. Your kitchen wine rack isn't helping either. Get serious about aging or drink the damn bottle.

Natural Means More in Wine Than in Food Chick'N Nuggets tricked me once. So I do appreciate that the “natural chicken” label means I’m not accidentally buying soybean slop, but that bird could’ve been raised a hundred different ways. “Natural flavors.” “All-natural.” “Naturally sweetened.” None of these mean anything on food packaging. Natural Wine still carries weight. France drew a legal line. To use the label vin méthode nature, winemakers have to use organic grapes, native yeast, no additives, no filtration, and no added sulfites. They also get audited. In Italy and Spain, there’s no legal standard, but strong winemaking communities set the rules. The pressure comes from peers and tradition, not the government. In the US, “natural wine” is not regulated, and the tradition is not nearly as strong, but before you assume systemic abuse, let's look at the incentives. Most wine in the US is mass produced. It is non-organic, high in sulfites, and heavily filtered. It sits so far from the specific definition of natural wine that labeling it that way would be a joke. Then, if you’re making higher-end wine, you’re not just competing locally. Your bottle sits next to wines from Burgundy, Piedmont, and Jura. The best wine regions set standards, so your wine is competing in a world where “natural” actually means something. Reputation is everything, and using the label carelessly would destroy your credibility. There is also a reputation problem in the US. Some people associate it with cloudy bottles that smell like a barn and taste worse. While those bottles won't make it to the liquor store, the perception exists. That reputation acts like a filter. If you’re selling to collectors or high-end restaurants, you don’t want your wine mistaken for something unrefined. Many producers following the same methods—native yeast, no filtration, no additives—choose to call their wines “low intervention” instead. So if you see “natural” on a wine label, you’re probably not being misled. The word still means something in the regions that matter, and Big Wine can’t even get close.

Did you know wine is good?

Stay Humble Stack Sats is intuitive to winemakers. Nothing makes you think longer term than planting a vineyard meant to last 40+ years. The first real harvest isn't until year 4 after planting. then quality red wine isn't ready to sell for at least 2 years after that. We DCA into vintages once per year, with a minimum HODL of 2 years before a bottle sells. We get one shot per year. In Bitcoin, what matters long term is your HODL stack. In wine, it's your brand perception. One shortcut with leverage at the top of a bull market destroys your stack. One shortcut to rush a wine damages your reputation. Either way it takes years to recover. This is my dad in our vineyard after a late frost decimated our entire 2021 vintage. What else can you do but keep building.

Where were you at the bottom of your first bear market? I was making this. Things are good now And so is the wine 🍷🫡

Saying GFY to Big Wine one smile at a time.

A gift for the Peony Lane fan in your life 🍷👀

I get a lot of questions about aging wine and specifically about aging Low Intervention wine. Here's my take: We've aged wine that my dad made in the same way I make it for 18 years and it was still getting better. Obvs every wine is different, but I think that higher acid of high elevation wines makes them incredible aging candidates. What I'm learning about aging low intervention wine is just that it requires more delicate care, but the aging potential is absolutely there. At 55-60 in a wine fridge you should be good to go for a while with these wines. The oldest wine I've personally made is 6 years old now and is still improving. If you don't have a dedicated wine fridge/cellar, DO NOT try to age my wines. You don't need to rush to drink them, but if you don't store them correctly they are not improving with age and risk going bad. If you want to HODL Bitcoin, you need cold storage and the same is true for wine.

Most wines taste the same. I've commonly opened bottles and thought "I've had this wine before" even if its from a producer I've never heard of. Most wine is made as a commodity. It is made to be an alcoholic beverage and there's nothing wrong if your main goal is to get drunk. Wine can be far more than that. Winemaking sits between art and science, but when focusing on the bottom line, the art is usually the first thing removed. Price isn't everything, but as you start going up, the commodity wine begins to disappear. Anyone with a winemaking degree from UC Davis can make technically correct wine, but it takes an artist to make interesting wine. Drink whatever tastes good, but if you have never understood why people get fall down the wine rabbithole it's probably because you've mostly been exposed to commodity wine

Some of y'all really need to go enjoy a nice bottle of wine with a beautiful woman. It shows.

Wine sulfite removal drops are everywhere, They promise to eliminate headaches and hangovers with a few drops. But do they actually work? These products contain food-grade hydrogen peroxide that chemically converts sulfites into sulfates through oxidation. UC Davis research shows a quarter teaspoon of 3% hydrogen peroxide can neutralize free sulfites in a typical wine bottle. So yes, they do legitimately reduce sulfites by 30-50% through legitimate. Only about 1% of people have genuine sulfite sensitivity, mostly those with asthma. For everyone else, hangovers come from alcohol dehydration, acetaldehyde buildup, histamines, tannins, or one of the 72 other additives allowed in American wine. Outside of the Placebo Effect, the "hangover be gone" claim is misleading marketing for 99% of wine drinkers. I don't think you need to be paying premium prices for stabilized hydrogen peroxide to solve a problem you probably don't have. Better hangover prevention: drink water, eat food, moderate alcohol intake and drink Low Intervention Wine.