Art of the Vineyard

Best Selling Stories

Press Kit

The pioneering Carmody McKnight Estate epoch resonates profoundly with: California wine country visitors, natural wine enthusiasts, cult wine fans, investors, luxury wine aficionados, oenologists, old world wine travelers, fine art enthusiasts, entertainment industry insiders, healthy lifestyle and natural beauty audiences.

Carmody McKnight’s estate, artisan-crafted, wines garnered some of the highest scores ever attained. Carmody McKnight achieved tens of thousands of dollars per bottle in international auctions, and continues the family tradition of honestly natural, limited production luxury wine making.

We know of no estate wineries in the world offering true to nature dedication and creativity and originality from the ground up with an incomparable narrative that in fascinating ways has become legendary.

There has never been a winery or an agricultural entity having such diverse and powerful messages.  They are virtually endless with a commanding story and content regarding every area and concern in our lives ~ from the widest political arena to micronutrients inside our bodies.

Stories

We all live in the land of the giants!

So, Get Used to it!

Gary Conway starred in Land of the Giants. Giants holds the record as the most popular TV series on a worldwide basis, playing in more stations internationally than any other.  The series follows a crew of passengers aboard a sub-orbital spaceship which encounters a space storm and winds up on a planet where everything is twelve times the size of its counterpart on Earth. Read Full Article

Decanting Art

An exhibition of Carmody McKnight wine labels “Decanting Art”.  Each wine, a individual work of art itself, is a creative peek into the future and final blend – Cadenza!  The labels are interim art works on their way to a final piece. They may be mixed media studies, works with ink and oil, perhaps combined with acrylic even combined with color pencil sketch.

View Exhibit

Phylloxera – the black plague

Phylloxera destroyed almost all vineyards and vines in the world…except the West Paso Robles Carmody McKnight Estate Vineyard. In the 1990s, while fully planting our Carmody McKnight vineyard from fence line to fence line, Phylloxera laid claim as the most cataclysmic crisis to ever strike agriculture not only in California but everywhere else.

Read More

Passion Assets

Investments are not just confined to traditional finance,  like real estate stocks. Passion Investment, as the name suggests, includes investing in assets where the output is more than just a financial return. And their value is determined by their rareness, quality, and their representation to the community who appreciates them.  Just like any other investment, passion assets are also looked upon to gain a return. Also termed as collectibles, passion assets include almost any product of desire that investors take pleasure in owning them. These assets bring dual benefits of joy and contentment because of ownership and also by providing a return for the investment to the owners.  Passion assets are unique luxury assets and their esteem is greatly recognized by communities of passionate investors and believers.  Cult Wines, one of the leading global investment service firms offers highly informative webinars on investing in luxury wines including the most expensive Bordeux and Burgundy wines as well as investment grade domestic wines, like Carmody McKnight – which has garnered up to $15,000 per bottle at auction.

Read Full Article

A Necessity of Life

This country’s ultimate intellectual and wine worshiper was Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. He spent months in France and Italy visiting the famed wine regions absorbing the art of wine. He drank wine “a bottle at a time” and developed an enviable wine cellar. He planted a vineyard at Monticello and spent 50 years on that serious pursuit. His wine expenditures each year ran $10,000.  Read Full Article

Triumph of Terrain. Triumph of Terroir

The Carmody McKnight vineyard and neighborhood rule the world in viticultural perfection.  This is not an opinion of a wine magazine or critic.  It is a fact of science determined by the world’s leading earth scientists and viticulturalists after decades of unprecedented university-directed studies and research.

It is difficult not to make such a judgement at first sight.  The rolling terrain of Paso West segmented by verdant hills.  The clearest, cleanest blue horizon with almost no humidity (anomalously bordering the sea).  Most diseases are caused by fungi which grow and spread under high humidity and rainy weather prevalent in even the once heralded vinegrowing areas. Read Full Article

Natural Flavors. Natural Immunity.

Good to know in a pandemic. when it is time to talk about disease protection. The bottom line: optimal nutrients = optimal disease resistance. It has long-been established by prominent university studies in plant nutrition and fertility: that grapevines as well as all plants have disease resistance mechanisms, some of which are also common in animal and human immune systems, that allow the plant to tolerate certain viruses within and show little disease damage from those pathogens. The interaction of the plant (our body), a pathogen (disease) and the environmental conditions – is known as the disease triangle.  Read Full Article

From the Judgement of Paris to the Judgement of Science!

Luxury Wine and Paso Pacific

In 1976 the Judgement of Paris made its mark.  California’s Napa Valley emerged as the new ultra-premium region over taking elite areas of France that commanded such prominence for many years.  The event took birth in a small wine shop in Paris with no expectation of the monumental results of placing Napa Valley as a foremost region for luxury wine. Almost 50 years later we now have the Judgement of Science.  This resulted from a fast-changing climatological wine world, where previous luxury wine regions are in decline mostly due to climate disruption and compromised wine growing. Read Full Article

The  Stubborn Truth About “Natural Wines”

Why “natural wines?”  Especially a “movement.”  What did our forebears create for centuries?  They did not call it natural wine.  The wine from their pure vines and grapes was free of chemical assault, now disastrous in our vineyards. The wine industry is undergoing intense scrutiny, healthy skepticism and unsettling self-reflection – all focusing squarely on the final ingredients in your glass. The fast-growing natural wine category is, in many ways, driving this evaluation. The problem is: there is no clear definition of what it means to be a natural wine. Until Now.  Start with proven science. Read Full Article

Sustainability: No longer a catch word.

Leading our world in sustainable farming for food and wine, there is nothing more precious or vital! Healthy and nutrient wine must derive from healthy and nutrient soil (almost non-existent in our farms) which inevitably creates the finest flavors and the superior wines is a no-brainer. Read Full Article

à votre santé

Can we toast this anymore? Or is this a cruel joke?  In our current reality it has been determined by a multitude of international studies that the vast majority of wines today are among the unhealthiest substances impacting our bodies. Instead, imagine a wine or even a food that can be documented scientifically as the healthiest in existence. Read Full Article

The Heritage of Miss America

Super smart and supremely beautiful lady creates the smartest, healthiest and beautiful wines. Miss America Marian McKnight Conway is the first woman vintner and vineyard grower on the Central Coast. Engaged with earth science at the highest scientific and university levels and the unique challenges of natural grape growing and wine making, Marian is a pioneer of the human health and environmental and conscionable farming. Read Full Article

So Cool

If we can break the cigarette habit, maybe we can do it with chemicalized wine. Do you think our fellow luxury wine makers will get rid of added chemicals? Read Full Article

Share the Vision

Man of terroir, of the earth, the wine, the art. Carmody McKnight vineyards, adjoining the Big Sur coastline but far above it, lie within the world’s premium wine growing area… a region of wondrous beauty of landscape, the essence of wine, and the tectonic art of the proprietor-pioneer, Gary Conway. Read Full Article

A Vow to the Land and its Gifts

A chronicle forthcoming

We are compelled to illuminate Carmody McKnight as the only eco-honest natural wine and proven so with decades of outstanding seminal science and resonating research with astounding implications in which we must all participate.  We are deeply thankful that we can once more prove to society that wine can still be created that supports our basic needs of health, well-being and consummate pleasures. Read Full Article

Land of Light

Land of Enlightenment

In the moments before the helicopter crashed I was mesmerized ahigh by the undulating wooded hills reaching into the almighty Santa Lucias where the light was blazing and spilling out wide and beyond.  A painting in light as in a dream, but I suddenly awakened by a sickening explosion of sound and a spinning helicopter.  I will always remember those terrifying moments but to this day I find myself still spellbound by the enshrouding day’s end sunlight as virgin and pristine as light from any heaven. Read Full Article

Nature Redefining Luxury Wines

The fast – growing demand for high quality wines made from organically farmed grapes and minimal intervention winemaking is set to top 1 billion bottles each year. This revolution requires luxury wines that have the kind of mineral, soil-expressive savor that makes it feel not like some lab-engineered “beverage” but a genuine wine reflecting a deep sense of place. We want to taste that dark, unctuous Cabernet fruit. We want that layered texture, but we want to taste and explore the earth, too—in this case the limestone/calcium rich soils of a legendary West Paso Robles Vineyard.

Image Gallery

High Resolution Images

Additional images available upon request.

Awards

Carmody McKnight Estate Wine Awards, Medals, Prizes, Honors, and Special Acclamation

Carmody McKnight Awards

Carmody McKnight garnered an unprecedented number of awards in the California State Fair Wine Competition with the top awards in Best of Show; Double Gold; Best Bordeaux Varietal Blend; Best of California; Best of Region; and highest points awarded, including over 20 perfect scores of 100 points. And this was a panel of over 100 judges that make that final assessment. Other Carmody McKnight wines also won Best of Show, Best of Class, Best of Region in the California State Fair Wine Competition as well as all the other major competitions.

Golds, Double Golds and Bests of Shows

California State Fair Wine Competition. Orange County Fair Competition. San Francisco Wine Competition. Riverside International Wine Competition. Grand Harvest Awards Wine Competition. San Diego National Wine Competition. West Coast Wine Competition. Orange County Fair Label Competition. LA County Fair Wines of the World Competition. Pacific Rim International/National Orange Show. Jerry D. Mead’s NWIWC Label Competition.

First Place

Orange County Fair Label Competition

Chairman’s Award

Riverside International Wine Competition

Highly Recommended

Beverage Testing Institute

Best Use of Art

San Diego National Wine Competition

Silver Medals

Pacific Rim Wine Competition Riverside International Wine Competition. Orange County Fair Commercial Wine Label Competition. The International Eastern Wine Competition. West Coast Wine Competition .L. A. County Fair Wines of the World Competition. National Orange Show Wine Competition. San Diego National Wine Competition.

Videos

Drone Footage Of Carmody McKnight Estate

Gary Conway at Beijing University

Contact

For Interviews, Tastings, Assets

Mark Elterman
General Manager
Email