For the 5th consecutive year the month of September has been declared California Wine Month. We are proud to be part of the more than 2000 wineries that produce wine in California.

We are taking this opportunity to have a big yearly sale of cases of all our wines. You will find special discounts between 10% and 30% off our already discounted prices. Delivery, as always, on our cases is included.

We recommend our 2003 Contado Mankas Cabernet Sauvignon. This cab has been maturing nicely in the bottle and is an excellent wine to serve for any occasion. We are offering it at a discount of 30% throughout the month.

If unsure which wine to try, give our samplers cases a try. These are collections of our wines gathered into a case at a great discount. They give you the ability to sample many of our wines and let you decide what your favorite is.

We hope all our readers will take advantage of this great sale and join us in celebrating this special month.

We haven’t had a chance to blog very much lately. Since our last entry we’ve released some of our 2006 and 2007 wines and more will come later this year. Our latest wines are the following:

• 2007 Mankas Crest Dry Rose’ 
• 2007 Piola Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2006 Mankas Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2006 Amelie Cabernet Sauvignon - Merlot

Some of you might have noticed that we now tend to release our wines after they have aged 2 years; one year in barrels and one year in the bottle.  This is because, over the years, we have noticed that our cabs age extremely well and improve in quality for many years after bottling. Our 2002 Contado Mankas, for instance, is still improving after 5 years in the bottle (unfortunately we have only a very limited number of cases left of that vintage which reached a gold medal in 2005).

We don’t follow this rule for the 2007 Piola and 2007 Mankas Crest Rose’ as they are addressing the demand from our customers that prefer younger and lighter wines at an affordable price.

After bottling a vintage we generally send it to some of the most renown wine competitions in order to get a qualified assessment of our quality. We believe wine competitions are a real and valid market test on quality because of the large panel of expert tasters evaluating the wines. Up to now we’ve won the following medals on our latest wines:

2006 Mankas Cabernet Sauvignon

• Silver Medal at the 2009 Pacific Rim Wine Competition
• Bronze Medal at the 2009 San Francisco International Wine Competition

2007 Mankas Crest Dry Rose’

• Silver Medal at the 2009 Riverside International Wine Competition
• Bronze Medal at the 2009 L.A. County Fair Wine Competition

2006 Amelie Cabernet - Merlot

• Silver Medal at the 2009 Pacific Rim Wine Competition
• Silver Medal at the 2009 Riverside International Wine Competition
• Silver Medal at the 2009 L.A. County Fair Wine Competition
• Silver Medal at the 2009 San Francisco International Wine Competition

Check our Accolades and Awards page for a complete list.

Look for the 2006 Amelie which has just been released! The 2006 Contado Mankas we feel is still “young” and we plan on releasing it at the end of 2009. For those of you in our wine club, you will start receiving some of these wines starting this month and in future shipments. You can check our wine club schedule to find out what you will receive. Enjoy!

We’re proud to announce the launch of the Mankas Hills Vineyards Wine Club. After quite a bit of thought on how best to set it up for our customers and after going through various iterations, we finally launched it late in August.

Our Wine Club is fairly simple and it leaves you with choices given our wine portfolio. We ship out 3 different wines every quarter to our members and according to the level of membership they’ll receive 1, 2 or 4 of each bottle. Being a member, makes you part of the Mankas Hills Vineyards family. We discount the wine we send you and also the wine that you might purchase in addition. Shipping costs are included in the price and you have access to early releases of our wines. We also announce far ahead of time what wines we are going to ship each quarter so you can see what’s coming. You can find out more on our Wine Club program page and our Wine Club FAQ page.

We hope this will give you the opportunity to taste our wines and have them on hand throughout the year at a great price. Give it a try!