Flowers of the Field was in part born out of the sense of fun my buddy Seth and I had combining chardonnay and pinot noir in a weird pet nat hobby wine we made in 2017. That wine was a goofy lowbrow play on the two main grapes that make Champagne. Our winemaking experiments weren't meant to be taken overly seriously, or to be too precious.



We often maintain that kind of atittude towards some of the beers here, but the silly beginnings of a beer like this are mostly a memory when it takes three years to make and the result is wildly complex. So while the result is potentially at odds with the "hahaha, let's put skin-contact chardonnay and carbonic press running pinot together in a beer" origin, the few folks who have had this have all smiled when they drink it. So even if it's maybe a bit complex and ageable its still super good and I figure it's okay to not take it too seriously and just drink it on a Tuesday when you just want a minute to forget your worries. Of ourse you're welcome to have friends over and impress then with your absolutely fucking impeccable taste, and you're also welcome to just smoke some weed and put on a good record and drink it by yourself.



Onto the technical details for those of you who, like me, are into that. This is made from 2024 harvest fruit, the first iteration of this beer was made during the 2021 harvest, which was the heat dome year. I liked that one a lot, and it was made more with the intent of letting the chardonnay lighten up the pinot and push it to citrus characters, but after drinking a few I wanted one that leaned more into the white varietal side of it, and so that's what we did with this one.



Chardonnay from French Creek, some Robert Young but mostly Mt Eden. Harvested 10/01/2024, cold soaked overnight with co2. Destemmed and crushed the following morning. We essentially made three beers from this fruit, and we used parts of all three in this blend. The dominant beer in this part of the blend was brewed early April 2023, a puncheon of a batch we called "spelt/grails" because it was essentially Grails but brewed with spelt instead of wheat, a low gravity noble-hopped saison. The blend also includes some Grails and some citra-hopped spelt saison.



Pinot Noir from Johan, clone 114. Biodynamic. I've had folks ask me about us using biodynamic fruit, because many of the ideas behind it are at odds with science, and I'm a man of science. To be clear, I don't believe in woo shit, but the folks at Johan do, and that means it's both organic and grown by people with obsessive attention to detail and care, which shows in the fruit and THAT is the part I do care about. Picked 10/08/24, put whole cluster into a 350 gallon tote purged entirely with co2 and left to undergo semi-carbonic maceration until 10/30/2024 when we removed the fruit and pressed it in our basket press. Press runnings went into two barrels which were topped with Sen XXXIII spelt saison.



After 9+ months of aging I looked at all of the various barrels and tanks of beer we had made and after a few weeks of working on various combinations of blends I chose varying volumes of five components to blend the final beer, including two different skin macerations of chardonnay, one original chard running source, one of the two Pinot carbonic press barrels, and some fresher citra-hopped saison.



Bottling date: 08/14/2025
ABV: 7.67% ABV
Conditioned with: Organic sugar.
Cellar: This has been conditioned in the bottle for 6+ months prior to release and is drinking great. It should continue to drink well for several years, but I don't think aging will improve it. Best before 2029.