BASIN AND RANGE

As the only all-Nevada winery in Nevada, Basin and Range Cellars is a true estate winery- performing all the work ourselves from pruning the vines to bottling, we are the only winery in the state who doesn’t outsource any of our farming. We use organic farming practices, with no chemical treatments that are so prevalent in California and elsewhere- our dry climate allows us to do this with ease. At 5240 feet, ours is the highest elevation commercial vineyard in the United States.

Vineyard

We farm all of our own grapes at our vineyard in Minden, Nevada. Our vineyard spans 10 acres of gently-sloping, well-drained granite soils on Buffalo Creek Ranch near Minden. Whereas most of Western Nevada is covered in volcanic rocks, our vineyard sits on an alluvial fan flanking the Carson Range, the easternmost front of the Sierra Nevada. Our arid climate, abundant sunshine, favorable soils, and high elevation provide an ideal terroir to cultivate our unique French-American grape varietals. It is a high and dry setting similar to that found in Argentina and Chile. While wine is still a nascent industry in Nevada, other’s have taken notice of our slice of viticultural paradise and a prominent Napa winery owner has purchased a piece of land near ours for a commercial vineyard and winery.

Farming Practices

We use organic farming practices free of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Our low humidity and unique French-American grapes varietals allow us to farm organically without running the risk of exposing our fruit to risk of mold, rot, fungus, or mildew. This is much harder to do in more humid climate like California where chemical sprays are prevalent. Our low intervention philosophy applies to our use of water as well. Prior to harvest, we limit irrigation and hand-prune the vine canopy to expose the fruit to sunshine, producing sun-ripened and very low-yielding crops with dense structure, fruit esters and unique varietal characteristics, all while maintaining fresh acidity.

Wines

Our wine catalogue has great variety. With a sparkling wine, dry white, two reds and a late harvest white, we try to make as many different and intersting wines as possible from our vineyard. Each bottlings are full of character, and unfiltered to preserve their originality. We produce only single vineyard, single varietal, and single vintage wines. We don’t make blends and we don’t use any California fruit. We make each wine in small lots from grapes that we cultivated, harvested, vinted and bottled ourselves. This control allows us to concentrate on every detail of the wine-making process and shape these wines into these award-winning bottlings, the only all-Nevada wines. Visit our wine page or our online shop to learn more.