What I can't get out of Nevada I supplement from a friends' vineyard down in Lodi. So Sauvignon Blanc I don't get here because it doesn't do well, like Chardonnay doesn't here. Reds do great of course. 

Winefullness: I notice that you have Italian varieties.

Tim: Yes. We're actually bottling Primitivo tomorrow, and then on Saturday we're bottling Sangiovese from a harvest two years ago. Then we're doing Malbec early next week, and then I took a Primitivo blend I had and I've made a Port out of it. We're trying to get our tanks empty because we harvest in two months.

   We start to harvest mid to the end of July, and because we have three distinct growing regions, The Mojave Desert, Central Nevada, and Northern Nevada, which is very similar to Walla Walla in the Washington Area, and though our harvest starts mid to the end of July, it'll last until October.

   It's a long harvest season, so we'll be done here in the desert by first week in September, and then we'll be harvesting in the middle of the state during the end of August, towards the end of September, and then in Northern Nevada we won't start up there until mid-September and it goes on until it's done.

   I was on vacation in Italy for my birthday on October Ninth, and my assistant calls me and says that she's just had a call that there are two tons more of grapes for us out of Reno. They thought they were done, and I'm managing the harvest from long distance, and my assistant is doing all the readings, all the measurements and I'm telling her what was needed with things like yeast and nutrient. ​

Winefullness Magazine: This is an area that one doesn't associate with winemaking...

Tim Burke: We get that all the time. I have a couple of answers. Everything here is on drip irrigation and our trelissing is managed entirely different than California.

   I took a few classes, and one of my instructors was from Texas, and he told me to take all that California vineyard management that I'd learned and just throw it away because it doesn't work here in the desert.

   In California they open up the vines because of all the moisture. We don't have any humidity here, so we take the vines and put them over the fruit to make little micro-climates so all the fruit is hidden because we don't want the sun exposure.

   It's a challenge to harvest because the fruits all buried. We have to come and trim all the vines down so we can get to the fruit. Between trellis management and watering, and how we water really enables us to grow some great quality fruit. 

   We had a tasting manager visit from Paso Robles and he tasted our wines and said they were better than his and that we needed to double our prices, and we often get people from other wine areas visiting and telling us that our wines are pretty good, and we thank them for their low expectations.

​Winefullness: Do you sell most of your wines in Pahrump?

Tim: We sell everything out of the tasting room. We sell about two to three thousand cases a year. We're the largest winery in the state. We didn't intend to be but it just turned out like that, and we sell everything direct to the consumer. 

   We have been asked to be in distribution. The Wynn has asked us, the Bellagio has asked us, Caesar's Palace has asked us to sell our wines to them, but they would virtually take all our production, and the system here would mean that I would shift a lot of volume but my profits would drop. If I start making 5000 cases a year, and I can do that. It takes time and money and I don't have either to spare.

   So, people ask us how we grow grapes in the desert, and I ask them where viticulture started, and I tell them that it started in the Middle East where they have found wine dating back 5000 years. It was more lush, but it was still a desert. We say that it started off as a desert plant and we're just returning it to the desert. It's fascinating.​

Winefullness: What are the problems and challenges you face out here?

Tim: As a winemaker it's managing acidity levels because with the high heat and the lack of a thirty degree differential our vines don't often have a lot of time to recover from the heat, so our acid levels tend to drop significantly as brix go up, so it's a judgement call.

We're all natural here so I don't add acid to my wines and it's all done by very careful winemaking. 

   Harvest is another challenge because of the heat. In California you harvest during the dark, but here we're in the desert, and what comes out in the desert at night? Scorpions, Black Widows, Rattlesnakes all come out at night. We also have bright lights, and bugs flock to them, so if people are wearing headlamps they get attacked, so we start harvest at around four or five o'clock in the morning. 

   We handpick, which is good, because it allows me to do some quality control out in the field. We try to be done here by about eleven o'clock or twelve at the latest because by then it's already 100/105 degrees. We have to keep everybody hydrated, cool, and we don't want anybody overheating, and that's only half our day. We still have to bring the grapes back, crush and de-stem. We'll still be here until eight o'clock at night. If you really pay attention, and are careful, you can make some very good quality wine.

​Winefullness: Have you used any of your engineering background to solve winemaking problems?

Tim: I have. One of my college jobs was working in a dairy and I learnt how to work with stainless steel and pumps to overcome the various challenges of the different products being made. 

   I never knew at that time that forty years later I'd be using that stuff, but my experience in marketing, my experience in engineering, my experience in the various job skills I've learned have really all come together.​

Winefullness: How big is your team?

Tim: About 15 people. We have more temporary labour during certain times of course. ​

Winefullness: Are there demands for water out here?

Tim: Not too much yet. Eventually there probably will be, but the one thing that works in our favour are linked to the traditional crops that are grown here in Nevada. There's alfalfa, and that needs a lot of water, and studies were done at the University of Nevada in Reno that said grape vines use far less water than, and are just as profitable as alfalfa. Let's not forget that vines are tough. They're like a weed, and you can't kill them. 

   This area will support about 100,000 people and we're at 52,000 right now so we've got a lot of room to grow, and the water table does recharge right now. That could change.

   Dyer Nevada have a bigger fight for water because of mining for gold and lithium, but most of the ranches around here have been here for 100 years or more so they have grandfathered in on their water rights.