Lone Buffalo Vineyards, launched in 2007 in Auburn, CA is the culmination of owner and winemaker Phil Maddux’s thirty-five year passion for wine making.  We do everything ourselves.  From the harvest to the crush and from bottling to labeling, the production process is truly a labor of love.

Wine making:
Phillip J. Maddux, Owner/Winemaker

Vineyard & Winery Team:
Phillip J. Maddux and Jill Maddux, Owners/Vineyard Managers
Jill Maddux, Owner/Sales & Marketing
Jocelyn Maddux, Marketing, PR & Website Manager

The Winemaker:

Although LBV is a new commercial venture, Phil Maddux has been making wine since 1971.  Born and raised in Sonoma County, Phil became interested in wine making in the early ‘70s when Napa and Sonoma were just getting started. He has combined over thirty years of home wine making experience with wine making, wine chemistry and viticulture courses at Sonoma State University, UC Davis and Consumnes River Community College from 1971 to the present and considers well known California winemakers Dick Arrowood (Chateau St. Jean, Arrowood Vineyards) and Cecil DeLoach (DeLoach Vineyards and Hook & Ladder) among his “mentors."

The Vineyards:

Our vineyards are planted to Zinfandel, Syrah, Tempranillo, Sangiovese and Viognier.  We also farm and harvest a nearby vineyard planted to Petite Sirah and buy supplementary varietals from other premium Sierra Foothills growers.

We believe that 95% of quality wine is a result of careful vineyard practices.  We try our best to be sustainable -- we don’t disc between the rows (we mow), we maintain a cover crop of clover, we limit chemicals and pesticides to wettable sulphur for powdery mildew control and we spread the pommace from the wine production on the vineyard as mulch.  We practice “deficit irrigation”  or “dry farming” (watering as little as possible) which means we generally don’t water at all until July, and then only one or two extended sessions (24 to 48 hours) by drip for the rest of the season.   We believe making the vines struggle a bit produces wines with richer, more intense fruit flavors.

The Lone Buffalo Philosophy:

Our vineyard management and wine making philosophies are similar - let nature do the work and be a good, careful caretaker. In the vineyard, this means selecting good location with the right microclimate (hillside vineyards with South or Southwestern exposure and enough altitude to assure cooling at night - we are at 1000 feet behind Folsom Lake, which produces a cooling afternoon breeze, even on the hottest days). The soil should be well-drained and not naturally rich in nutrients so that the vines have to struggle a bit. Decomposed granite is ideal. Irrigation is kept to the minimum necessary to keep the vines alive. The point is to produce rich, complex, concentrated fruit, not luxuriant vegetative growth. The more the vines have to struggle, the more complex and concentrated the wines will be. The one interference with nature that we do advocate is crop reduction, either by the trellis system (head pruning the Zinfandel, for example) or by dropping fruit. A premium wine vineyard should produce no more that 3.5 tons/acre.

As for what happens in the winery, we believe that the less done, the better. Ninety-five percent of good wine is made in the vineyard before the fruit is harvested. The grapes should be harvested at optimum ripeness (not over ripe, which will produce high-alcohol “jammy” or “pruney” wines, or under ripe, which will produce thin and often very astringent wines) and vinified as simply as possible. For both reds and whites, cold-soaking for 24 -48 hours before fermentation to ensure maximum extraction of fruit flavors. For the reds, long skin contact during fermentation and barrel aging for a minimum of one year for both oak flavor and micro-oxygenation. We use both French and American Oak.  For most whites, cool (50-60 degrees F) fermentation to ensure that the flowery, fruity esters which give whites that fruity, flowery nose and fresh flavors are not driven off by heat. We believe in minimal racking (2-3 times for both reds and whites), no fining unless absolutely necessary for clarity and no filtering for the reds. A really good winemaker is a really good caretaker of what nature has given him or her.