About Us
nice intro about you could go here
Our Team
Christopher Crawford Corley
Winemaker
First generation Scot-American and second generation wine producer in Napa Valley. Chris’ 28 years experience in the wine cellar shows in his 93+wines and more important, a continued desire to discover better ways of making wine. His “intellectual winemaking” outlet is fueled by his great work in his family’s” Napa Valley Vineyard Estate and clients in Valle de Guadalupe, Baja, and Puli, Taiwan.
Marilyn Crawford Corley
Founder and Matriarch
Born and raised outside Falkirk, Scotland. Established CrauforD wine company in 1999 with the intention to honor her seven centuries of Clan Crawfords and the love for Napa Valley. Scots are known for quality and a wee nip…in Napa…premium wine.
Julianna Corley
Viticulture & Organic Farming
Growing wine grapes for the past twenty years for clients such as Opus One, Hourglass Vineyards, Williams-Selyem, and Weightstone Taiwan. With a concentration in teaching organic farming and sustainability.
Our Winemaking Philosophy
Our winemaking philosophy at CrauforD is straightforward. We work with vineyards that appeal to us, and make wines that reflect and celebrate those sites.
- The CrauforD wines are all single vineyard wines, even if they don’t always carry the vineyard name on the bottle.
- We believe in a light touch in the cellar, but also understand that the winemaker plays a vital role in helping to guide the fruit from the vine to the bottle. We like to have a gentle, guiding hand.
- We work with organic, or sustainable, vineyards and sort through the fruit meticulously by hand when it arrives on the crush pad.
- We use isolated yeast strains, as we select the yeast strain specifically to the varietal and type of wine we are crafting. In our view, all yeasts are ‘natural’, whether native or isolated.
- Our red wines are hand-crafted in small quantities, so are almost always fermented in small bins, and punched down by hand.
- Our use of oak is balanced and respectful of the wine, in our opinion. All of our red wines are barrel aged, and rarely in more than about 1/4 to 1/3 new barrels. We age in barrel from 16-30 months, depending on the varietal and vintage.
- Our whites are generally aged in stainless steel, or in used oak barrels, and we tend away from new oak in our white wines.
- Wine is an annual celebration of the vineyard and the vintage, and each year we like to experience and enjoy the differences that each season brings!
Our Farming Practices
Farming is a very personal experience. With that comes many different opinions and categories; conventional, organic, sustainable, bio-dynamic to name a few. Our farming philosophy is to make choices that are always supportive of the land. Our dry climate in Napa Valley allows us to make minimal organic inputs into the vineyard, a real terroir expression in the wines. Our spring Mountain soils are a mix of sedimentary and volcanic rock, a blend of Feltin, Millsholm and Boomer soil profiles. Primarily well drained with lots of rock. The vineyard begins at 1450 feet elevation with a south-east exposure and slope of 12%. The 4.2 acre vineyard is planted to Cabernet Sauvignon ( clones: 337, See, 7 ) and Cabernet Franc ( clone: ? a friend ). Along our creek is the first documented spring of the Spring Mountain AVA, with two, bountiful, hand dug wells. There are many giant Redwoods, Napa Oaks, and Pine trees. Add chickens, peacocks, Meyer Lemons, Mission Fig, wildflowers, pumpkins, gourds and Heritage vegetables, and you start to get the picture. Farming is our everyday life. We live in the vineyards. We are proud to grow organic fruit without herbicides and insecticides as we simply don’t need them. And not to sound cliche, but a balance is the goal. Balance the soil to rootstocks, irrigation, vigor. Balance nutrients and canopy for fruit set and quality. Balance fruit level to vigor to maintain fruitfulness in the vineyard. We work every day to bring our customers the best fruit possible. That’s our philosophy.