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Our Story

After an illustrious career in professional football, Terry Hoage and his wife, Jennifer, purchased a 26-acre vineyard on the west side of Paso Robles. In 2002, they made their first wine under the tutelage of Justin Smith from SAXUM Vineyards, and the adventure that is TH Estate Wines officially began.

Terry and Jennifer have been involved in almost every aspect of the winery from day one. Terry designed and helped assemble the press and shaker tables, engineered and installed the irrigation system, and planted the vineyard (with the exception of 5 acres of Syrah that were designed and planted by John Alban in 1998). Jennifer ran the blending and oak programs, pulling from her exploration of French wine while studying in France, and her extensive experience guiding New Orleans Magazine’s food and wine section.

vista of the TH Estate Vineyard

Togeth­er with Terry’s fam­i­ly, they designed and con­struct­ed the 3,000 square foot steel-framed win­ery and tast­ing room, incor­po­rat­ing 150 year old barn wood sal­vaged from a farm in Iowa. Though small, the win­ery build­ing boasts a full pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty along with two inti­mate tast­ing rooms, with Jen­nifer and Terry’s per­son­al touch­es evi­dent throughout.

Jennifer and Terry Hoage crouch in front of barrels in the barn, smiling at their white lab dog.

Estate Vine­yard

“When all the com­po­nents come togeth­er, they make a tru­ly unique expres­sion of Paso Rob­les ter­roir, light on its feet but still packed to the brim with char­ac­ter and inten­si­ty.” — Justin Smith on Ter­ry Hoage Vine­yards fruit

We are sit­u­at­ed on the con­i­cal hills of west Paso Rob­les in the Wil­low Creek Dis­trict. Here the cal­care­ous rich soils and the large diur­nal tem­per­a­ture shifts con­tribute to a unique grow­ing envi­ron­ment. This allows for great acid reten­tion dur­ing lat­er sea­son ripen­ing and ulti­mate­ly a dynam­ic and fresh pro­file in the fin­ished wine. 

The view down two rows of grape vines, looking out over rolling hills with an expansive cloudy blue sky.

Farm­ing

“As con­sci­en­tious stew­ards of the land, we use all avenues avail­able to us to ensure the preser­va­tion of vital nat­ur­al resources.” — Ter­ry Hoage

One of our strengths as a small grow­er is the abil­i­ty to micro-man­age the vine­yard over the grow­ing sea­son. We can break the vine­yard blocks down into small sec­tions and make the nec­es­sary deci­sions dur­ing the sea­son to grow the fruit for a Pick, 5 Blocks, or Hedge.

Jennifer Hoage works crouched among lush grape vines. Terry Hoage frowns down at something in his hand from the driver's seat of an orange farm four by four. Rows of vine stakes and vines are lined up in the background, heading up a hill where a large green barn sits at the top.

Wine­mak­ing

“We believe in a min­i­mal­ist approach to wine­mak­ing, with atten­tion to detail in the vine­yard being essen­tial. Good wine­mak­ing begins in the vine­yard.” ‑Ter­ry Hoage

We hand pick the estate fruit at night. After we bring the grapes in, we sort it and use an array of fer­men­ta­tion tech­niques to help craft the unique pro­files of each of the wines. The fin­ished fer­men­ta­tions move to bar­rel, are blend­ed at 10 months, and age for an addi­tion­al 8 – 16 months before bottling.