Introducing The 2022 Vintage
The First Release of the 2022 Vintage
There are moments in the life of a vineyard when the work starts to show. For Burnt Hill, the release of our first 2022 wines feels like one of those moments.
This month, we share the first two single-barrel selections from the 2022 vintage with our wine club members: an estate Cabernet Franc and an estate Cabernet Sauvignon, each grown on the hill, fermented with native yeast in ash wood foeders, and aged for three years before bottling.
For me, 2022 is impossible to separate from my own life. As the growing season began, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. By the time harvest arrived, I was going through my first bone marrow transplant. It was a year that stretched me, my family, our team, and this farm in ways I still don’t fully know how to put into words.
But what I remember most is not absence or hardship. I remember people showing up. Our team kept farming with care and conviction. Our viticulturist, Lucie Morton, and a circle of neighboring vignerons stepped in quickly and generously, lending their hands, their experience, and their encouragement at the exact moment we needed it. Looking back, I remember 2022 as a year of community. It reminded me that farming is never truly solitary work. The vines may be rooted in one place, but the people around them are what help carry a vintage through.
These are small wines in every practical sense. Just 300 bottles were produced from each selected barrel. But they feel large in what they represent: a young farm beginning to show its voice with more confidence, more clarity, and more permanence, and a vintage carried forward by resilience, patience, and the generosity of others.
The 2022 Cabernet Franc comes from clone 214 on 101-14 rootstock, harvested by hand on October 11, 2022. The fruit was carefully sorted, destemmed, and fermented with native yeast in ash wood foeder for 14 days before being pressed and moved to oak barrels for aging. After three years sur lie with regular stirring, two barrels were selected to represent the vintage.
The wine is lifted, savory, and mineral-driven, with red cherry, black raspberry, crushed herbs, tobacco leaf, cedar, graphite, and warm spice. It carries the aromatic detail we love in Cabernet Franc, balanced by the depth and polish that come from patient élevage.
The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon comes from clone 6 on Riparia Gloire rootstock, harvested by hand on October 21, 2022. The fruit was chilled overnight, destemmed into ash wood foeder, and fermented with native yeast through gentle extraction over 13 days. After pressing, the wine aged for three years in Tonnellerie Taransaud barrels before two single barrels were chosen to showcase Cabernet Sauvignon from the vintage.
The wine is structured, focused, and deeply expressive, with cassis, black cherry, plum skin, graphite, cedar, cocoa, dried herbs, and earth. It shows Cabernet Sauvignon through the lens of Burnt Hill: not oversized, but precise, mineral, and age-worthy.
We chose to share these first wines from the 2022 vintage with our members because they have helped carry this farm through every season. Their support allows us to farm with patience, invest in quality, and wait for the wines to become what they’re meant to be.
Every vintage asks something different of us. Some test our resilience. Some reward our patience. Some remind us how deeply we need one another. And some, like 2022, begin to reveal what this farm is capable of becoming.
-Drew Baker, farmer / founding partner
The first two single-barrel selections from our 2022 vintage, photographed beautifully by Maggie Neal.