We’re keeping the Bogle ball rolling today – we can’t say enough about these superstars. We’ve covered the legacy behind Bogle and also their crowning glory – the Chardonnay – but Bogle covers all their bases. The normal Chardonnay may be a beautifully broad-stroke quaffer, but for our more discerning drinkers, they offer up their Reserve Chardonnay.

The Bogle Reserve Chardonnay is a tier higher than the Bogle we know and love, and offers the same core qualities that have rocketed these wines to the top, but with an extra edge of complexity and creaminess. It’s heavy with tropical fruit and nougat notes and melted butter oozes decadence.

The main point of difference when it comes to this chardonnay is that it is 100% estate-grown fruit from the Bogle Vineyards in Clarksburg. The fruit is 100% barrel fermented in 100% new American oak and then ages on the lees and is stirred 2x a month for about 8-10 months.

Whilst the regular chardonnay isn’t 100% estate-grown fruit, the team at Bogle work hard to select local growers whose fruits can uphold their signature tastiness and who align with their sustainable values.

We know the wines, let’s get to know the Bogles behind the bottles.

Jody Bogle, alongside her brothers Warren & Ryan, is a sixth generation Bogle. She is the Director of Public Relations, and is currently touring New Zealand after announcing that New Zealand is one of their top export markets!

We were lucky enough to sit down with Jody who gave us some insight into what it means to be a Bogle…

“Growing up was a really wonderful experience as a kid. My parents were just starting the vineyards. It wasn’t until 1978 that they put it in the bottle under the Bogle name. And so growing up I watched them try different types of varieties – what grew best, what didn’t, different clones. The offices were in our house, my mother was doing the books at night in between raising four children and my dad was farming so it was very grassroots as a kid watching this business – this fledgling business – and they worked really hard.
We all had little jobs – I used to have to go out to paint end posts and trim vines and weed and I hated all of that. I really as a kid was not pleased to have to go out and work in the vineyard, especially when I got a little older and went to highschool and all my friends were lifeguarding at the school pool and here I am you know, out in the field ten hours a day. But over the next several years while I was at college and a year or two after – I started seeing the wines in the marketplace, seeing it in the grocery store and going ‘oh wow, this is really doing something!’ and started to feel that kind of pull to come back to the business which I ended up doing in 1997.”

“We all want the same thing at the end of the day and that’s to carry this on. We all have young children and I know that our goal is – you know we didn’t start this – but our goal is to keep it going for them so they can have that opportunity if they choose to, none of them have to. We’ve all agreed that at a certain level you can’t just keep giving people jobs because their last name is Bogle, though, so any of our children who want to come back and work will have to have gone to school and gone through the process.
My daughter is turning fifteen this summer and it is my expectation that she will get a part-time job in the winery. I said ‘you can help with events or you could go work at the lab at the winery’ and she’s like ‘hmmm, I don’t mind working in the lab!’.
When she was really little she did a project with one of our winemakers, a little science project where she could ferment little vials of wine, like one naturally, one native yeast… How cool, right? I think she was in 6th grade. She really enjoyed it, we walked into the lab and she looked around and said ‘Is this science?!’ and I was like ‘yes, this is science!'”