Pruning may not be the first thing you think of when you consider what makes a good wine. But for Bill Kesselring, Peloton co-owner and winemaker, making good wine “starts on day one.” That means in the fields, where Bill is most at home, cultivating the highest quality fruit possible.

Some may say it, but Bill lives the motto that the best wine starts with the best farming practices – even something as seemingly mundane as pruning.

“If I brought in really crappy fruit, I’d be in a mess because I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Bill said. “I don’t really see myself as a winemaker, per se.”

But the wine certainly speaks for itself.

Making award-winning wine since Peloton’s founding in 2005, Bill focuses on quality and letting the grapes speak for themselves above all else. That becomes harder and harder to find as there becomes more and more ways to manipulate the fruit in the winery.

“Which to me is kind of cheating,” he said. “I’d rather just bring it in as the best fruit I can possibly grow in the field.”

Farming is something Bill knows a lot about as the owner and founder of Kesselring Vineyard Consulting & Services Inc. He’s managed vineyards all over California for over 25 years, which allows him to have a hand in all aspects of the fruit Peloton sources.

It gives him the ability to pick and choose what wine will be made from year to year, rather than having the program be set in stone.

“The advantage to us is that if we don’t like the way it looks that year, we just don’t do it,” he said.

It’s one of the many things that sets Peloton apart and is what becomes readily apparent when you drink our wine.