- Registered Texas Longhorns -
- Gaited Trail Horses -
- Award Winning Wine -
About us...
Hello, we are Mike and Catherine Murphy. We live in a quaint and historic artist and agricultural community 30 minutes south of "Music City" - Nashville, TN, and have been raising livestock since 2001. Our efforts began with South African Boers and quickly grew to gaited horses and longhorn cattle. We are passionate about our livestock and look forward to our foaling seasons each spring and calving in late summer. Although our herds have grown significantly, we still have our first cow, Daisy, and our first foal, Rocco, because we enjoy watching them grow and getting to witness the development of their offspring.
Our enthusiasm for gaited horses quickly grew after our first 35 mile ride in 2002. We sold our quarter horses and began getting Spotted Saddle, Tennessee Walker and Rocky Mountain horses. Since then we have made the necessary investments to grow our stock to top class foals bred to some of the best Stallions in the U.S...and recently added our own SSHBEA/TWHBEA/RMHA stallions by Premier Delight/Sun's Delight and Fairwinds Destiny/Storm Warning, both World Grand Champions.
In 1999 we began exhaustive research to carry out another of our passions, to make fantastic wine. We were discouraged with the Tennessee grown varietals so in 2004 made the plunge to buy grapes from leading west coast vineyards. We invested the same level of care and commitment that we put into most everything we do and developed great wine: we get grapes by the ton from respected vineyards, we ferment in new French oak barrels for 14 - 22 months, depending on the varietal, to gain the oaky traits that we prefer and then we develop labels that include many of our own animals, they're handpainted by a talented artist/friend and then digitized onto our labels. We hope that you too have a chance to enjoy the great care and attention that we put into every bottle!
Our winemaker: Kian Tavakoli
Kian joined Bellaterra Ranch Winery in 2005 to carry out our
vision and head up our varietal winemaking dream. We feel
honored to have such a talented and experienced viticulturist.
Kian most recently was the winemaker at Clos Du Val where he
ran their red wine program – including their highly acclaimed
reserve bottling. Before joining Clos Du Val in 1996, Kian spent
four years learning cabernet winemaking at Opus One. With
over 10 years of winemaking, operations and viticultural experience, Kian brings a combination of passion and experience to help us produce nationally acclaimed wine.
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Copyright 2003
