Bella Cavalli Farms & Vineyard

Some moments at the ranch you can't script.

A few years back at one of our Kentucky Derby parties, a little girl in a sun hat wandered over to the stone barn to meet a horse for the first time. Sammy leaned down. She looked up. The whole afternoon paused for a few seconds.

Her parents are wine club members of ours. And what that little girl didn't know in that moment was that this is exactly the kind of memory Joanne and I built Bella Cavalli to create.

15 years of Derby parties. Vineyard walks. Picnics on the lawn. First meetings with horses. Members are family. Family makes memories.

Thanks, Sammy, for being such a good ambassador.
🐴

That little brass instrument in Joanne’s hand is a refractometer. It measures sugar levels in grape juice — what winemakers call Brix.

She crushes a single grape between her fingers, drops the juice on the glass, and the number tells us exactly where the fruit is in its ripening cycle.

Too low and the grape isn’t ready. Too high and we’ve waited too long. The sweet spot is usually a 48-hour window. Miss it and the wine never recovers.
Joanne walks the vineyard with that refractometer every few days in late summer. I trust her readings more than any lab report.

23 years married. 23 years of her telling me when to pick. She’s almost never wrong.
🍇

We teach them young.

Hayden’s at the wheel. Brixton’s riding shotgun. Cowboy hats on. Western shirts buttoned. Both of them staring out across the arena like there’s a job to do and they’re the ones who need to do it.

There isn’t, of course. Not really. Their in our John Deere and the most serious work happening today is making sure the Gator gets parked back under the lean-to before lunch.

But this is how it starts. With a hat that’s slightly too big. A steering wheel that bigger than them And the look on a kid’s face that says I’m doing it. I’m part of this.

Twenty-three years on Highway 246. Four generations of this family have now ridden, driven, or otherwise commanded a vehicle on this property. The youngest two are just earlier in the curve than the rest of us.
Tag the kid in your life who’s already practicing for the job they want when they grow up. 🚜

Hashtags:

Throwback to last Albariño harvest.
Slide 1: The work. First light at Bella Cavalli. The crew moving down a row, loading the morning's pick into the bin behind the tractor. This is the part most wine drinkers never see — bent backs, cool air, hands cold from gripping the clusters, somebody calling out from three rows over.
Slide 2: The result. One bin. A few hundred pounds of Albariño. Picked at first light when the fruit is still cool and the sugars are sitting right where I want them.
Albariño is one of the trickier whites we grow — Spanish in origin, thin-skinned, easy to lose if you wait one day too long to harvest. The window between not quite ready and too ripe is sometimes only 48 hours. Miss it and the wine tastes flat. Catch it and you get the bright, citrus-forward, mineral wine that's become one of our wine club favorites.
The wine is in those bins somewhere. We just have to coax it out.
Albariño fans — what's your favorite food pairing? 🍇

Hashtags:

This is what wine club really means.

That's Joanne pulling a sample of our Grenache straight from the barrel. The long glass tube in her hand is called a wine thief — it's how we taste wine while it's still aging in oak, before it's bottled, before it's labeled, before anyone outside the cellar gets to try it.

I'm the winemaker at Bella Cavalli. Joanne is my palate.

I make twelve handcrafted styles a year. Before any of them get the green light, Joanne tastes through them — barrel by barrel — giving honest feedback no consultant could match. 37 years married. 23 years of tasting my wine. She knows the style we're chasing better than anyone.

Here's what wine club members get that nobody else does: when you come to Bella Cavalli, the day is yours. A picnic on the lawn with friends. A walk through the vineyard. Time with the horses. Whatever kind of afternoon feels right. Joanne and I design every visit around the people coming.

No tasting room. No standing in line. No tour bus next to your table.
Just the ranch, vineyards and the horses, and a few hours that feel like yours.
1,200 cases a year. 250 wine club positions open right now. Membership is the only way in.
🍷 Free Insider Kit — link pinned in the first comment.

Hashtags:

Three photos of the same horse.
Slide 1: Abby on her first night. A few hours old, standing up for the first time on legs she barely understood. Joanne and I have delivered every foal born at Bella Cavalli for the last 23 years — Abby was one of them.
Slide 2: Same horse, years later, carrying our grandson Brixton through his first ride. She walked the arena like she’d been waiting for the assignment her whole life.
Slide 3: Same horse, Brixton and his little brother Hayden meeting her at the fence. Hand reaching up. Nose reaching down. The patience between them isn’t something we trained. It’s something she came with.
A horse becomes what the people around her are. Twenty-three years on this property and Abby is the proof.
Tag someone who’d understand this. ❤️

Hashtags: