Stefania Wine

New Website and New Blog Site

2011-05-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

You've probably noticed we haven't been posting blogs for a few weeks. We've been working on getting a new website and blog site together and didn't want to complicate the data import more than we needed too. We're now ready to go live with the new sites and this will be the last post here at this URL!

First the website address will not change.

Stefaniawine.com

There are many changes on the site and new colors and pictures. The biggest thing though and a key thing we wanted to accomplish was to integrate the blog with the website. We've done that! The blog will now show up on the front page of the website and can also be accessed at:

New Integrated Blog Site

All of the old blog posts will still be available here and they will also be available on the new site. All new postings though will be on the new site. We like the blog changes a great deal. You'll now be able to see previews of the latest blogs, the top blogs, and we've added categories and tags to make searching the blog easier.

There are still lots of editorial changes Stefania and I will be making over the next few weeks. We're updating all of the background information and making it crisper. The section on our wines will be made easier to follow and all of the information there will be updated and put in a common format. In general we're trying to focus on keeping the content in the blog section where it is 'fresh' and information elsewhere on the site will be more concise and basic.

For instance there will no longer be an Events page (which we could never keep updated anyway), instead there will be a category called Events in the blog. We're also hoping that it will be easier for people to interact with us and ask us questions through the blog and website. Let us know what you think and look for blog postings on the new site to start showing up over the next few days.

Enchilada Pablo

2011-05-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

When we were in Miami there was a restaurant that had 'stacked enchiladas' on the menu and claimed they were a 'unique invention'. I was seriously insulted. Layered enchiladas are traditional in Northern New Mexico and the only way I've ever seen my aunts make them. I never saw Aunts Isabel, Loyda and Alyce make them any other way and in any good restaurant from Espanola north to the Colorado border, including Sante Fe, when you order enchiladas this is what you'll get.

I have to warn you, this is not Rachel Ray - 'Easy Breeze' or '30 minute simple' meal. It takes some work to pull off. Stefania will need to chime in too and share with you how to make the sauces. You can of course use canned sauces and save 2-3 hours of prep time.

Ingredients:

12 smallish corn tortillas
1/2 cup of oil
4 cups of red enchilada sauce
2 cups of green enchilada sauce
1 pound of cooked turkey
1 can of refried beans
8 oz of Jack Cheese
3 green onions
1/4 cup Crema Fresca

A note on the red and green sauces. Usually I just make this with red sauce. Normally in New Mexico you are asked if you would prefer red or green. If you want both that's called 'Christmas' or 'Christmas Tree', so you don't say 'both' you say 'Christmas' to get both. This last time I made some red and some Christmas. As the green sauce is generally much hotter, it's a good idea to cut it with some red sauce.

Chop your turkey into small bits. You can also use ground beef, ground game (I've had elk and venison), chicken or shredded pork, what ever you prefer. Turkey is kind of traditional in my family as these are usually served on the day after Thanksgiving or day after Christmas. Add the turkey to a small pot and add just enough red sauce to cover. Heat on low.

Heat the beans with a small amount of water in a second pot.

Heat the oil in a large fry pan. Fry the tortillas lightly for 8-10 seconds on each side and then drain on paper towels.

To assemble:

In a large baking dish lay two tortillas flat on the bottom of the dish. Add about 1 1/2 tablespoons of beans and spread them out with a spoon to coat the tortilla. Add 2-3 tablespoons of meat and spread that out over the beans. Scoop out 1/4 cup of sauce and cover the meat and beans. Add a small bit of cheese then cover with a tortilla. Repeat the process.

To top the enchilada add one more tortilla (each enchilada will have three total). Cover with sauce until fully coated, some will drip down the sides. Then add a generous amount of cheese. The cheese inside should be just a small amount, most will go on top. Bake uncovered for about 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven and add chopped green onions and a tablespoon of Crema Fresca.

This recipe will make four enchiladas and they are VERY filling. Count on one per person. Another note on the Crema Fresca. Any recipe that calls from Creme Fraiche you can use Crema Fresca. The only difference is Creme Fraiche is sold at Whole Foods for $9.95 a quarter cup and Crema Fresca is sold in Mexican markets for $1.25 a quarter cup.

May Event @ Twist

2011-04-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

We are filling up the calendar fast!!

On tap for May 22nd (Sunday) is a winemaker dinner at Twist in Campbell. We are hosting the Friends of the Winemakers but have reserved a small table for our friends.

If this is something you might like to attend, send me an email: stefania@stefaniawine.com

Sunday, May 22nd at 6pm
Twist Bistro

Starter:
Daily Fresh Roasted Vegetables OR Baked French Vegetarian Onion Soup OR Eggs Meurette

Main:
Marinated Tritip & French Fries OR Catch of the day OR Vegetarian dish or vegan plate

Your choice Dessert:
Semi Sweet Chocolate Mousse OR Espresso Ice Cream OR Dominique’s cheese platter

$56/Person all inclusive (wine/tax/gratuity/yadda yadda)

Upcoming Event, May 21st - Downtown Saratoga

2011-04-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Paul and I have signed up to pour at "Bonnets & Blooms" in Saratoga on May 21st.

We haven't decided which wines we'll pour (we usually only take two at events like these) but we have committed the last magnum of Haut Tubee for the Wine Magnum Auction.

http://business.saratogachamber.org/events/details/saratoga-springtime-wine-stroll

The website says 2-5pm, the flyer says 3-6pm......Advance tickets are $35 and available online

Hope to see you there!!

Shipping Complete!

2011-04-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

Quick Shipping update. Stefania got the last boxes out the door yesterday. There are a few on vacation hold for people, or holding for pick up at the winery, but unless you've asked us to hold your box, it's now gone out.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers Japan Benefit Concert

2011-04-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers Japan Benefit Concert on April 29 (Fri)

Play for Japan USA, a project launched by Japanese working mothers in the SF Bay Area, presents a benefit concert featuring Anne Akiko Meyers, one of the most celebrated violinists who has been the featured soloist with the world’s leading orchestras and collaborated with such artists as Michel Bolton, Chris Botti, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Anne was flying over Japan when the earthquake hit the country (for her performances in Osaka, which eventually got canceled) and thus has graciously agreed to perform for us.

All proceeds will go to the Japan disaster relief efforts through the American Red Cross, Give2Asia, and the Japan Center for International Exchange.

Date: April 29th, Friday

Place: Woodside High School Performing Arts Center [Map it]

Time: 8pm (doors open at 7pm)

Ticket: starting $35 -

For more information & buy tickets, visit: www.playforjapanusa.org

SF Chronicle Article: Japanese Working Mothers Orchestrate Benefit Concert Featuring Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers for Japan Relief Efforts

Play for Japan USA is started by Japanese working mothers in the Bay Area who wanted to take action to contribute to the Japan relief efforts (for details, please read SF Chronicle's article). This concert is officially endorsed by the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco and fiscally sponsored by the Kurosawa Piano Music Foundation, a 501(c) (3) tax exempt organization. All proceeds will go to Japan disaster Relief effort through American Red Cross, Give2Asia, and Japan Center for International Exchange.

As you may know, Anne is one of the most celebrated violinists who has been a featured soloist with the world's leading orchestras and collaborated with such big names as Yo Yo Ma, Michel Bolton, Chris Botti, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Anne was flying over Japan when the earthquake hit the country. As a mother of a young child herself, she has graciously agreed to perform to support our cause. Please come join us to enjoy her beautiful performance by ex-napoleon stradivarius!

I've attached a short description of the concert and E-flyer below.

You can also find our paper flyers at http://playforjapanusa.org/press/.

This is a great opportunity for you to stand in support with hundreds of individuals and organizations in the Bay Area for the Japan Relief efforts.

Road Trip Part II

2011-04-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was see 'fly over' country from the ground. I've been across Nevada and Utah many times but never through the back country except for one trip up Hwy 95 to 168 with Stef in 2001. We decided to take 2 1/2 days getting back and stay off the interstate.

It would be a good time to travel in the desert as it was cool and there had been lots of recent rain which left everything green instead of brown. The first leg of the trip would be through the town of Santa Clara and up old hwy 91 through Gunlock to Vejo and Hwy 18. This was the only time we got lost on the trip, missing the turn to Gunlock and not knowing we were lost until we hit the 'Welcome to Arizona' sign about 9 miles past our turn.

An interesting thing about Santa Clara was that many of the yards in town had grapes growing. We guessed they were not wine grapes but probably planted for jelly making by the early Mormon settlers in the area.

Once we got on the right route to Gunlock we came across this rare sight of the Gunlock Falls.

Stef and I hiked down off the road and up the falls away to take these pictures.

We heard many of the locals hiking the falls that day and on the road say they had never seen them flowing. The reservoir was full and the falls serve as an overflow. It's been a very wet year in the west.

From Gunlock we continued on hwy 18 through Enterprise and to hwy 56. This is 'Crop Circle' territory. When you fly over the desert and see the giant round circles and wonder who in the world is farming out there? This is the place, Western Utah, and every farm seemed to be owned by someone from the 'Holt' family.

As we entered Nevada hwy 56 became hwy 319. We turned in the town of Panaca north on to hwy 93, the 'Great Basin Highway'. Other than the town of Ely, which I would guess has 4000-5000 residents each town we'd go through was no more than a few hundred people. Some that showed on the map would turn out to be modern ghost towns, with 10-15 empty buildings and just 3-4 occupied.

At the hwy 93 turn we stopped at Cathedral Gorge for some more hiking and picture taking.

We'd hike up to the little overlook below only to find out you can access it from the highway. There are hundred of little caves in the sandstone and original facilities built by the CCC in the 1930's.

On Sunday we saw more elk, deer, antelope and a golden eagle among the highlights.

Sunday night we stopped in the Hotel Nevada in Ely and had dinner at the Jailhouse Restaurant. This is completely Chevy Chase/Vacation movie stuff. We stayed in the Micky Rooney room at the hotel. Each room is named after a star who once stayed in the hotel.

Monday we headed west on hwy 50, 'The Loneliest Road in America'. I didn't take pictures as we went that day, just enjoying all the mountain passes covered with snow as we went through them and more deer, antelope, wild horses and wildlife. The entire time from leaving St George in Utah, until arriving in Fallon Nevada I would pass just two cars and be passed twice also.

The highlight of day two came about 90 miles outside of Austin Nevada, a town marked with a large hand painted 'Speed Trap Ahead' sign. As we rounded a large turn Stefania said; "Why are there so many cows moving along the hill?" As we cleared the turn right along the road there were five cowboys moving the cattle on horse back. I know this is a rare sight. In New Mexico when my uncles moved cattle, horses where mostly brought just for nostalgia. Most of the work was done with trucks and ATV's. I always felt like the horses came out just so the kids from California could ride them and I always looked like Billy Crystal in 'City Slickers' with sneakers and a ball cap. There were no trucks or ATV's in sight though.

We arrived in Tahoe about 3PM and I had reserved us a room in the Marriot Timber Lodge with a full kitchen. Stef and I cooked dinner that night and enjoyed the luxury. The next morning we continued on hwy 50, then 5, 580, 680 and 87 to home. We arrived back at 2:30 PM with 1527.6 miles behind us.

Road Tripping Part I

2011-04-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Stef and I headed out to visit her brother and mother in St George Utah. We got on the road and took our traditional picture. 5:44 AM and 44 degrees. Most of the trip would have temperatures in the 40's or lower. A cold front was passing through the desert as we traveled.

Our first stop for gas was in Tahachapi Pass. In all we'd go through about two dozen mountain passes on our trip and almost all of them had snow. On the way to the Central Valley we saw Tule Elk along the road. Interstate 15 had the worst drivers I've ever seen. Friday afternoon from Los Angeles to Las Vegas brings out a terrible group of drivers. There were always 15 cars in the fast lane for every car in the slow lane, which meant the slow lane moved faster. Still no one would get right.

We made it through Vegas with just a slight traffic delay and passed through the Virgin River Gorge. We rested that night and the next morning went out visiting and then on a hike to Snow Canyon in the Red Rock Mountains. The storm was breaking up and it stayed cool with high clouds all trip.

One of the trails on the trip was called 'Butterfly', so I kept my eyes open for caterpillars and spotted this little blue colored one almost right away. I was thwarted in all attempts to figure out what this little guy is because 'blue caterpillar' is a character from Alice in Wonderland and every Google image was either from the movie or scores of mommy blogs featuring their little precious dressed for Halloween.

The desert was in full green bloom. A pretty rare thing from my trips through and this little cactus I particularly liked.

We hiked out to an overlook of the main valley and across a series of lava flows.

Stef and I took turns taking pictures of each other.

I spotted this little tunnel and climbed up the rocks to get a better view.

This was the view from the top after the tiny bit of rock climbing.

And these little red flowers had just bloomed in a crack in the rock.

The activity was full justification for Stef's brother to BBQ up a huge plate of ribs for dinner that night!

And he opened one of my favorite wines a 2001 Cline Mourvedre Small Berry Vineyard.

Saturday afternoon we visited a few art galleries in St. George after the hike. Sunday we packed up and had brunch with Stef's mom then headed out across the desert, deciding to avoid the Interstate's. More pictures tomorrow.

Mineral Hill Update

2011-04-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning the whole crew was out at Mineral Hill to complete the installation there. Jerry and Millie had finished the wiring on Saturday morning after Millie spent all day Friday prepping the wire and connectors.

My job was to dig holes. Stefania was officially the 'supervisor'. She made sure all the wire work was polished off, trained the homeowners on how to plant (they did 90% of the planting) and see to all the details including pounding in 90+ rebar supports. Millie finished up support nails for the catch wires and rigged up the drip line so it was off the ground. Jerry cut rebar for Stef and helped with planting.

I also planted a few of the plants including the three table grapes at the end of the vineyard. The table grapes need some expert care and pruning so that's how I ended up with that job. Below is me finishing off hole #91. I did about 60-70 of the holes. Stef is in the background making sure the catch wires are attached correctly.

It was a really great morning. Blue skies and temperatures in the high 60's and low 70's. Great conditions to work in. Below are a couple of shots of the almost finished vineyard before we started digging holes to put in the plants.

The site is now complete. We installed 5 additional plants as a nursery in case any of the main plants don't grow. We also set up a watering schedule for the first few weeks. For the rest of the summer we'll have a few check ups to do to see on progress.

Open House Review

2011-04-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we held our Spring Open House. Usually we send out an announcement to everyone on our mailing list within the Bay Area. This year though we had rain the entire week before the open house and one day in particular that Jerry said was the most rain he'd ever seen in a 24 hour period.

The net result was that the little field we usually use for parking was too wet to mow and too soft to park in. We decided rather than trying to do traffic control on the street, or worse have to tow cars out of the mud, we'd cut back on the email invites and just send them to people who had checked off 'hold for pick up' on their order forms.

This gave us a small group of visitors and a much more low key event. The first picture I took was for some people on the Wine Spectator forum. There was a question about 'gunk' in wine and I thought I'd take a picture of some Syrah we have in a carboy. This is the net result of letting 5 gallons of gross lees settle for a few months. The lees are on the bottom and the wine is on the top.

Now a better picture of our hostess with a bottle of wine in the cellar getting ready for visitors.

Here is our little low key tasting table. I actually forget sometimes I'm supposed to do the pouring and tend to think people will just help themselves. Not your normal tasting room experience I'm sure. I was feeling like celebrating the opening of a new Chavez Supermarket near our home so the treat were chips, red salsa, nopales salsa and queso fresco.

I opened 5 wines in total the three from the current release: 2009 Chardonnay Chaine d'Or Vineyard, 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Crimson Clover Vineyard and 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains. The other two wines where a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard and 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Uvas Creek was best after being open about an hour. I think that means it's almost out of the odd stage that this bottling has always gone through from age 3 to 4. If you want to open one over the next few months I'd decant it for about an hour to let the cherry fruit open up. Right out of the bottle the fruit is a little muted but with air it comes back around. I saw this in the 05 and 06 also at about the same age so I think it's something with the aging profile of this particular vineyard.

Bud Break at the Home Vineyard

2011-04-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've been having some terrible issues getting pictures off of my Samsung Fascinate so I've been slow on putting blogs up. Verizon and Samsung like to send out updates to the phone regularly. Here's a picture of the Engineering and QA teams at Verizon and Samsung preparing for their next update.

So basically every updates totally and completely breaks picture transfer and it takes hours to sort it back out. With that little rant out of the way, here's some happier thoughts.

We've had bud break in all the vineyards now and as usual the home 'Haut Tubee' vineyard led the way. This is a Thompson Seedless vine in the front parkway. One of our neighbors asked us if we would plant some table grapes so we did.

This is one of the remaining 'old boys' from the original planting. This is a Grenache. That's Italian Parsley growing around it. Stefania planted all kinds of herbs and flowers around the vines. We've been using the parsley a lot and I actually discovered that the stalks get pretty thick and if you peel them they are a good addition to stews.

This is a Mourvedre vine with some California Poppy's in the foreground. This little plant will send runners down the line this year that will become cordons. The plants in the background are a mix of Crimson Clover and wildflowers. It will be another two weeks or so for the colors to really start coming out.

Here's a more mature vine closer to the house and some Crimson Clover that's already started to bloom. This plant will send out the start of spurs this year and should produce about 10 pounds of fruit.

This is one of the 'old boys' in the backyard that we've retrained to cordon and spur training. I used this particular plant in past blogs about pruning and thought I'd give an update on how it looks this year.

Another one of the 'old boys' in the backyard sending up two new shoots from its spur. This little growth here will eventually produce four clusters of grapes that will weigh in at about 6 pounds. Everything in the backyard now is Syrah.

Tasting Notes on Older Wines.

2011-03-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Last night we opened two wine from the 2006 vintage.

2006 Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch. - This is in a really good drinking window right now. The tannins are soft and lots of secondary flavors coming through with the plum and berry fruit. Originally I put a shorter drinking window on this and I think now to 2013 is prime for this wine.

2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard - The was also really good last night, with round tannins, lots of berry and cherry fruit and a long finish. Worth trying at 5 years old and rounding out really well. There's a nice spice on he finish.

I'm going to open a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek soon. The 05 and 06 both went through rough patches from age 3 1/2 to 4 when they seemed disjointed without a long decant. The 07 has been the same for a few months now and I want to check if it's coming out of that.

Shipping Update

2011-03-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

We're almost ready to start shipping for our Spring Release. Stefania has cleared out the garage and tabulated the orders so far. She placed an order for boxes and those will arrive next week. As soon as the boxes arrive she'll start having the wine picked up from CWT. I'll probably do this in the FJ Cruiser after work as CWT is on my way home. We can only handle about 40 cases of wine at a time in the garage with all the shipping material so we'll have to do a few runs.

She'll pull the wine and pack boxes and we'll send them to UPS in groups of 10-15. More than that and it overwhelms the UPS Store. Shipping will be on Mondays and Tuesdays to avoid having the wine sit in any warehouses over two weekends. That means the entire UPS portion of the process will likely spread out over three weeks.

California, Arizona and Nevada Orders will go out via GSO. We have more options with those as it's overnight (CA) or two day (NV, AZ). That means we can ship out Monday through Thursday. The GSO driver also is able to handle more cases at a time, so it's possible all the CA, NV and AZ orders will be done in a week and a half or so.

We still do have wine left from the Spring Release. We're very low on Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon, but have good number of Chardonnay and Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon left. It's not too late to get an order in and we usually get a little grouping of orders right after Tax Day on April 15th.

Small Vineyard in Monte Sereno

2011-03-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

There are just about 40 plants in this vineyard just outside of downtown Los Gatos. The address is Monte Sereno, but it's just 2 blocks from the main drag in Los Gatos.

The plants are Merlot from our best guess and are about 15 years old. There's a mix though of cordons from very mature to brand new which makes me think the vineyard was probably not taken care of at some point in the past, then restored.

Stefania and I went out and did all the pruning a few weeks ago. It took both of us about 35 minutes to finish and carry out the cuttings. We'll have more pictures from this vineyard as we go through the year.

Snow!

2011-03-09T11:51:00.001-08:00

This was from the storm that came through February 25th - the one that got everyone excited that it might snow on the valley floor. No such luck down below, but the foothills got a nice coat of the white stuff.

Everyone asks if the snow is bad for the vines and the standard answer in California is "not really". Frost on the other hand can zap an entire crop if the tender buds and shoots get burned.

I threw a couple of snowballs for the dogs to chase but after the second one they were on to me and then went back inside the winery to see what Paul was up to. We spent just a few hours in the morning racking the '09s and catching up on paperwork, a really light day which was nice.

We hit the Chavez market by our house and grabbed lunch at the taqueria before heading home to the kitties.

New Housemates

2011-03-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

Meet the new kids:

This is Rupert aka Fat Cat.
She's enjoying her new couch and in/out privileges. Most afternoons I
can find her sitting among the roses just keeping an eye on things.

And this is Buster aka Little Bubba.
When he's not getting into mischief he's a social little lover with
plenty of purrs. For awhile I was calling him my my little alarm
clock. He gets up very early and likes to talk.

Rupie in the garden....

Little Bubba on the couch...

It's been just over four weeks and so far everyone is getting along. There have been minor adjustments to our normal routine but nothing dramatic. They're a lot of fun and great company to have around. I'm learning that computer work in the afternoon is impossible until Mr Loverboy gets his 15 minutes of purring and attention out of the way before he settles in for another nap. Fat Cat is happy being solitary and would prefer I not pester her all day long with constant pets, attempts at mouse play and general house noise. She's very interested in food and treats though.

The Peacock Vineyard

2011-02-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

One of the new vineyards I didn't get a picture taken of last week was this small 250 plant vineyard in Morgan Hill. Coming up with a nickname for a vineyard can be a little tough sometimes. It's also hard to describe them to Jerry so he knows where I'm sending him. So we might call something a fanciful name like' 'Vista Vineyard', but Jerry will know it as, "The Vineyard with the Crazy Lady'.

This new site though was pretty easy to come up with a nickname for and the nickname will be an easy way for Jerry to remember it too. A muster, and they are called musters if it's mixed males and females, of peafowls have made this backyard their home.

Here's a closer view of the lead Peacock. Peacocks are completely unafraid of humans when they are feral in California like this group. I don't know how they behave in India but here they largely ignore human's, cats, cars, and any other distractions.

Stefania and I were out at 8:00 AM Sunday morning (It was 32 degrees when we arrived) to show the owners how to prune. They had a vineyard management company who put it in and was taking care of the vineyard for them but this year they wanted to do most of the work themselves.

That's something we're happy to help out with. We'll answer emails and phone calls when they have questions and go out and show them how to do key things in the vineyard like pruning. Sunday we spent about an hour showing them how to prune these three year old vines.

The site is actually similar to our home vineyard. It's on the eastern side of the Santa Teresa hills in deep rich black clay. The vines will have a lot of vigor and yield well with little watering. The owners aren't actually sure if it was Zinfandel or Cab Franc that was installed. Their paperwork says Cab Franc, but the lead installer told them it was Zinfandel. Right now it's hard to tell the difference. It looks like Cab Franc to me. As soon as the plants get leaves I'll be able to tell the difference very quickly.

We're hoping the yield will be high enough to process the grapes on their own. Right now it's likely going into the Haut Tubee blend. In the future though with other vineyards we have coming on line it might be part of a Santa Clara Valley Cabernet blend.

Saturday Vineyard Pictures

2011-02-22T17:22:00.000-08:00

I did pretty good on Saturday, I actually took a few pictures in 2 of the 4 vineyards I visited. The 5th appointment was canceled as it was raining all day and the owner thought the vineyard was too muddy. I think the mud and rain worked to my advantage all day. Usually it's hard to stay on schedule with these types of visits as the property owners have dozens of questions.

With the rain Saturday though no one really wanted to stay outside and chat, which worked just fine for me. The first stop was a 3 acre vineyard near the Uvas Creek vineyard site. It's in the same small valley between the Santa Theresa hills and Santa Cruz Mountains that we like so much. This vineyard though was in foreclosure and has not been taken care of for two years.

The vines are black from mildew and we've nicknamed it the 'Black Hole Vineyard'. The new owners are trying to get it cleaned up and repaired. I was visiting on site to show their vineyard helper how to try and prune the vines in an attempt to recover them.

This is a closer look at just how ugly it is right now. None of the fruit was harvested last year. I doubt it could have been used with the amount of mildew on the vines. You can see there is a serious gopher problem and the trellis system is in need of a major overhaul and upgrade.

On my next two stops I didn't take pictures. The first was just about 1/2 a mile from the 'Black Hole Vineyard'. It was 250 Cab Franc plants. The vineyard was in excellent shape and the owners are just looking for someone to train them how to take care of the vines so that they can do it themselves. I'll have pictures from that one this Saturday when we go out to show them how to prune.

After that I was in Los Gatos talking with another homeowner who had just purchased a house with 40 Merlot vines in the backyard. That went fast and I had time to stop at Cooper Garrod for a visit on my way to my last appointment of the day. This is the tasting room there.

My last stop was at a 2 1/2 acre vineyard in the Mount Eden area of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This vineyard is at 900 feet and is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. It would be a good addition to our Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet, so we're trying to work out a deal for the fruit this year.

Miami Pig Roast Pics II

2011-02-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

Part II

Miami Pig Roast Pics I

2011-02-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

No captions, just pictures -

To be continued...

Help! I have a vineyard and I don't know what to do!

2011-02-18T06:55:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when my phone and email start buzzing with notes from people who own small vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley. The larger companies send out their contracts in January each year and many home vineyard owners start looking for alternatives.

I have five appointments set up for Saturday at five different vineyards. This doesn't include the vineyard we did agree to take on and install back in October. They vary in size from 100 plants to 2 1/2 acres. Two are in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA and 3 are on the Santa Clara Valley AVA and in some cases the owners aren't sure what type of grape they have.

I'll head out and take a look at each one to see if any fit our plans. Most of the time they do not and we decide not to take on the vineyard. It could be a bad trellis system, or poor location, or even that the vines haven't been cared for properly. Often though it's just a decision on the people we'll be working with. I'll try and take pictures at each one and get those up next week.

Spring Release

2011-02-17T07:45:00.000-08:00

Stefania mentioned our Spring Release in her Miami post.

She's been working away on letters this week and they should all go out by next week at the very latest. There will be three wines:

2009 Chardonnay from the Chaine d 'Or Vineyard - Santa Cruz Mountains

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Crimson Clover Vineyard - Santa Clara Valley

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains

There will be a three pack option for people who have just signed up for the list and various combos available for everyone else. The Crimson Clover Cab is somewhat limited and not everyone will be able to have an allocation on that wine.

Thank You Miami

2011-02-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

The only thing missing in this picture is a glass of wine...thank you Jorge and Mairi for a wonderful experience in Florida. This truly was one of those epic "Great Food Great Friends and Great Wine" events.

I'll be back online later with more pics per Paul's request. I had forgotten just how many shots I captured of crooked architecture in New Orleans. I was teasing Millie that it would drive a carpenter nuts to have to work with the odd angles.

Also, I have pics of our new housemates and stained glass valentine cookies to upload.

Right now though, it's back to printing the offer letters, the Spring Release will be in the mail as soon as Friday of this week.

Cheers and thanks again to the folks in Florida that hosted us!

New Orleans and Miami Pictures

2011-02-15T17:28:00.000-08:00

Just a few pictures from our trip. I know Stefania has a lot more so I hope she uploads them soon.

Getting supplied up in our apartment in New Orleans for the week. Cigars and the fixings for Manhattans that we like to enjoy on afternoons in the courtyard.

Hurricane's at Pat O's. On days we weren't in our courtyard in the afternoon, we were here. They had heaters and on some afternoons we needed them.

We stay one block over from this location. We've stayed on Dauphine between Orleans and St Ann for several trips in a row now.

I think we went to Coop's 5 or 6 times in total. There is always a line now to get a table. This was a Tuesday night at 8PM.

Besides walking all the way through the Marigny and Bywater to eat at 'The Joint' on Monday we ventured out to St Bernard's Parish on Tuesday night to visit with Fay at her second job. Fay is the regular bartender at Coop's and makes the best Bloody Mary I've ever had.

Usually when we visit in October the crawfish are not in season. This time though Stefania was able to find them and order a huge basket.

As we got to the bottom of this basket of 40 or so I peeled the tails for her while she cracked the heads.

Then we were on to Miami, so a change in afternoon cocktails to Margaritas.

We had a great dinner Thursday night and Stephanie and Ari's (see the Florida Key's Girl link on our page). We also went three times to Jaguar in Coconut Grove for ceviche by the spoon.

Saturday night we were hosted at a traditional Cuban pig roast. Here's the 50 pound guy in his marinade.

The box is called a Caja China or China Box. This is the pig almost ready to come out as our host Jorge manhandles the charcoal.

And the guest of honor eating the pigs ear.

We had an amazing trip and we're already looking forward to our next trip to Florida.

Web Site Update Coming

2011-02-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

We're in the process now of getting bids to update our www.stefaniawine.com site. Look for changes in the next month or two. We plan on changing the color scheme some with more greens.

The amount of content will also be reduced. When the site was first put together in 2005 we provided a lot of background information that we will now remove. The wine releases will also be better organized with data on past release on individual pages for each year.

I'm also hoping we will have a better sign up page. Our current one is unreliable and prone to errors or returning the wrong data on a successful sign up. We're also going to be integrating the blog into the website. I'm not sure if we'll move the entire blog over, I suspect we won't, but at very least we will have an RSS feed that will provide the latest blog entry on the website.

The pictures will also be refreshed on the site.

My Mineral Hill Pictures

2011-02-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

This is the picture Stefania was talking about. Bruce the vineyard dog and chaser of rabbits and small fury creatures with some of the rock types we pulled out of the post holes. The first one is a light volcanic pebble. Then some sandstone. Rare on this side of the mountains, and new and brittle. Then an assortment of quartz and serpentine rocks. The last one is a red jasper stone.

We also found an ancient creek bed with well worn river rock. The largest we had to pull out was about 40 pounds. The holes went down 3 feet. Below Jerry and Gil check to make sure the posts are lined up.

Gil had used a two man post hole drill before so he and I quickly had Jerry trained. I was glad though to have them doing it and avoid the wear on my shoulder.

There's a little trick to doing it. You have to drill down about a foot, then pull back out so the dirt doesn't weigh down the drill too much. I was cleaning the sides of the holes and then digging out the bottoms with a hand tool.

In about half the holes we hit either roots or large rocks that have to be dug out by hand. For that we use a cement breaker and shovel. Jerry is going back on Thursday to finish up and I'll try and check on him in the afternoon.

CWT - Labeling Shiners

2011-01-31T14:01:00.000-08:00

There's a term used in the wine industry: Shiners. It's used to describe wine that has been bottled but not labeled. The only way to identify the wine is that the bottle 'shines'.

We were talking about having to label shiners the other day and someone thought we said Shriner's and wondered how or why we were labeling them...and if it was hard to do as they zoomed by on the little go-carts. They move pretty fast, sometimes you hope to snag them by the fez and slap a sticker on 'em.

Ok, not really. A shiner is a bottle of wine without a label. No name, no identity. Just to be clear:

Shriner:

Shiner:

We ended up with 91 cases of these that we had to handle the labeling on and will distribute through our local sales rep.

We finally got a name and an identity but it was long after the bottling truck had been through, so Friday I went over to CWT with Estella and Gerardo and we spent a couple of hours labeling all 91 cases by hand.

Estella unloaded the shiners, Gerardo and I labeled them (mine all slope up on the right, at least I was consistent), and then he put the finished bottles back in the cases and taped them closed.

I really thought this was going to take a lot longer than it did, but we hustled and got it done.

Mineral Hill Vineyard

2011-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

I'm sure we'll come up with a bunch of different names for this site before we actually get grapes, but as of yesterday I was set on Mineral Hill. As the crew drilled post holes a bunch of different rocks showed up in the soil.

I brought home jasper, serpentine, yellow and red sandstone, chalk, something volcanic and porous, an aggregate, quartz and quartz crystals. They hit river rock and tree roots that slowed them down in a couple of spots, but mostly it went smoothly.

Gerardo and Paul, Mt. Umunhum in the background peeking out through the clouds. The latest news is that there are plans to demolish and remove the tower before they open the park to the public.

The posts...

The post holes...
Paul wanted to make sure I got a picture of him working so that you don't think he just stands around supervising the whole time. Gerardo and his brother-in-law Gil drilled the holes and Paul cleaned out excess debris then helped hoist the auger out when it got caught.

One of 34 posts...

They actually set 22 posts before fatigue set in and the light rain started. There are 4 holes that have to be excavated by hand because of roots so we'll head back later in the week and finish that up.

I'm hoping Paul will remember to upload the pictures of the rocks and Bruce the dog, he's going to be a great vineyard dog. We're very excited with this piece of property and looking forward to getting it online.

St. Vincent's Paganalia

2011-01-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

It's that day of the year again:

St Vincent's Day

or Paganalia

Herrardo was working at Chaine d'Or all day to finish up the last of the pruning. I also went up to help him and do a little work in the winery. There were just seven short rows left so it was not too much work.

I also stopped by our local church to drop off the traditional wine offering for Father Bennett who actually prefers to be called Father Chris. He did a wonderful service last year when Bill passed away and the entire staff at the church was great to my Mom. I wanted to thank him again for that and hoped he's say a prayer for the wines again this year.

We'll have a small party tonight to celebrate. Stef is going to make paella and we're going to open Spanish and Portuguese wine. For the last few years, in keeping with the Pagan theme, this has been a pajama party. Come as comfortable as you can get yourself.

In years past we've done this as a large party with 20-30 people. Stef and I decided though that this year we were going to make the winter parties smaller with just enough guests that we can sit everyone at the tables (10-14). The house is just too small for more than that if we get bad weather or cold. In the warmer months we usually spill outside and that makes it much more comfortable. We also can use the grills outside then and cooking for bigger groups is easier.

The first 'big' party we're working on will likely be in late April. I have a new cigar humidor and we'll break that in with a red meat, red wine, cigars and whiskey party.

Links and Ads

2011-01-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

We have a small group of links on this blog. There really should be more but I'm bad about adding them to the page. If you have a link you think I should add please send me a note. As long as it fits in with our general theme I'll add it.

We do not accept advertising however other than the little tiny link that makes our page hit counter at the bottom go for free.

When we started this blog it was really because we were so busy in the winery and vineyards that we didn't have as much time as we wanted to keep friends and family updated on how things were going. We thought putting some blogs up was less intrusive than blasting people with email. We've never thought of it as a commercial enterprise and we'd like to keep it that way. The cost to us is small, so we're willing to spend the few dollars with out Advertising.

Pruning

2011-01-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't really written a lot about pruning this year, but it has been going on. We're already done with Crimson Clover, Home, the Church, and almost finished with Chaine d'Or. We still have Split Rail and a couple of smaller vineyards to get done, but we think we can finish those soon.

The pictures below are actually out of order. You can tell by the fact that there is fog in the last one and then it's gone in the first one.

This is from a small vineyard in Los Altos that we pruned on Monday. The picture below is the finished vineyard. About 225 Syrah vines in total. The vines are young and just now being trained with Cordon's and spurs.

Below Stefania and I had just arrived and she was inspecting the vineyard. The little section she is in has a lot of dead plants and we're going to ask the homeowner to get the soil tested this year. The problem area is in a swallow from the home in the background. It looks like something is draining down that hill from the house above and into the swallow and killing the plants.

It could be a chemical that's decades old, maybe even something left over from the original construction. It may also be something as simple as a weed and feed fertilizer that they are using on their lawn and that is running off through the vineyard. In any case we won't know if it's a chemical problem until we test.

The total number of plants effected is small, just about 20, but we'd still like to find out what is going on as the rest of the vineyard looks really good.

Winery Day

2011-01-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Saturday I was in the winery for a day of work. Stefania was helping a friend move so I headed up by myself for the days work. My first task was to top up all of the 2009 wines. That's the process of adding wine to the existing barrels. Each barrel loses about 1/2 a gallon per month through evaporation and that has to be replaced. If it's not the resulting air gap in the barrel can lead to spoilage and infection of the wine.

In the winter time when the cellar is at 55 degrees and the weather is humid, evaporation is slow and I top up every month. In the summer the cellar warms up to about 65 degrees and the air is dry so I top up every two weeks.

After topping up I drew samples from all our 2010 wines. The TTB and ATB of California require us to have a lab certified reading of all of our wines. So after the new year each year I draw samples to send into Vinquiry for official measurements. I try to take an equal amount from each barrel. Below is the Pyrex bowl I transfer the samples into and three of the five sample bottles are filled and ready to go. Vinquiry has a special tag I'll put on the bottles before shipment, but in the winery I use a Sharpie and blue tape.

The 2010 wines still have fermentation bungs in them. You can see them on the top of the barrels below. It's a small tube and water bowl. The idea is the tube allows air to escape from the barrel and the water bowel prevents air from getting back into the barrel. The water is treated with sulfur to make it bacteria free.

If the barrel could not vent itself, any gas created from ongoing fermentation or from the secondary fermentation would be absorbed by the wine. This could create off flavors or worse make the wine spritzy.

I was actually pretty pleased with the 2010's at this point. They all have really dark colors and I was not getting any unripe flavors, which had been a concern. The Pinot is still fermenting slowly but the other wines are all finished. The wines were rounder than I expected too with no angular tannins at this point.

I also spent some time out in the vineyard helping Jerry prune, and we had a couple of guests stop by for a brief tasting. The weather was great though and I wished I could have spent more time outside pruning.

Wine Competitions

2011-01-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again when we start to get dozens of letters and emails, even phone calls, from wine competitions asking us for entries. In the past we've entered the SF Chronicle's competition. We did that mostly because a few people over the years have been less than supportive and we wanted them to know we're still around. Spite entry actually.

This year though when the Chronicle called I had to tell them no. We don't have enough wine to even give them 6 bottles to enter, much less the case we have to give them if we win something. So there will be no wine competitions entered this year.

I'm not sure if we'll enter one again. Probably not I think, but we may decided to again, you never know.

Q4 and Year End Results

2011-01-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

Last year I had a series of postings about our results and business planning. I started with an update on the state of the wine industry that I mentioned our Q1 results in. I then followed up with our Q2 results in another post.

Those two generated a lot of conversation with regular readers and followers of the blog so I wrote two more pieces. One about our business planning and then a follow up when the plan was complete.

Stefania hasn't totally finished closing out the books on Q4 and 2010, but she's close enough to get me a few numbers to share. We finished the year with record revenue from wine sales (I track vineyard revenue too, but separately). We were up 61% in total. I had predicted a conservative estimate of up 40%, but thought 60% might be possible.

Wholesale sales were up 283% from 2009. I guess I was right. We could do a better job than the distributors I fired in 2009, 283% better. Everything was a new high for us in 2010, direct sales, wholesale and total.

At our meeting in September we had three options for 2011. One was to finance and build out a complete new winery operation. Option two was to build out a partial winery operation, keeping crush and fermentation at Chaine d'Or and moving storage and bottling to a new facility. The third option was to focus on debt reduction and paying ourselves back some of the money we've invested so far.

For right now we're going with option three. Stef is now getting a paycheck and we're committed to paying me back for all expenses I have in 2011. We'll use that to pay off debt we've used so far to finance the winery. We'll reevaluate at the end of Q1 and Q2 as usual and things may change if sales keep up at that high level.

The low crop levels in 2010 were a big factor. We would have been out of room at Chaine d'Or if crop levels were normal in 2010, but because they were so low we have enough room there in 2011 to meet our plans. That's taken some of the pressure off the need to expand. We also were not crazy about taking on another $60k-$100k in debt.

We'd like to see if we can get in a position by next year where we can finance that amount on our own or with a small group of private investors. The banks we've talked to are most interested in tying a loan to real estate and we're just not anxious to tie the house to the winery at this point. We think we could do better offering a real good rate to private investors in small amounts, so that's more likely what we'd do.

In any event we're excited that 2011 will be a good year.

Travel Plans

2011-01-14T17:37:00.000-08:00

We will be out on the road again in February for a few visits. Details on events are posted here:

http://forums.winespectator.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2566058161/m/1357009022

http://forums.winespectator.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3146091161/m/3937078022

We don't really have anything planned yet for New Orleans other than the usual eating, drinking, visiting, art shopping and 'scholarship pageant ' attendance. We'll have our own place again though so would be really happy to get together with anyone in town. We'll be there from the 4th through 9th.

In Miami we have a pretty full agenda and will be there from the 10th through 13th. I'll be bringing along our newest releases and some barrel samples of our 2009's.

The Line Up

2011-01-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

Every so often we get a note from a friend that they've brought our wine to a big tasting or dinner and they'll share the list of wines with us. We got one last week from a friend in Miami and the list was impressive:

2005 Bodegas Nekeas Vega Sindoa El Chaparral Old Vines Granache
1969 Chapoutier La Bernardine Chateauneuf du Pape
1995 Chapoutier La Bernardine Chateauneuf du Pape
2001 Turley Estate Petite Syrah
1989 Chapoutier Monier de la Sizeranne Hermitage
2001 Domaine Tempier Cuvee Speciale La Migoua
2003 Clos des Papes (Vincent Avril) en magnum
1985 Paul Jaboulet Aine Hermitage la Chappelle
2001 Roger Sabon Le Secret des Sabon
2003 Le Vieux Donjon Chateauneuf du Pape
2007 Chateau Mourges du Gres Terre d'Argence
1998 Guigal La Mouline Cote Rotie
2003 Chateau Rayas Reserve Chateauneuf du Papes
2007 Stefania Eaglepoint Mendicino Syrah
2000 DuMol Eddie's Patch Syrah

A list like this always reminds me of the first time I took a barrel sample out for people to try. It was at a dinner in Maryland and everyone decided that the perfect time to try my little plastic bottle full of wine was right beside a 1999 Joseph Phelps Insignia and a 1995 Ridge Montebello. That's a high pressure moment.

We've always done really well at these type of events though and we actually get lots of sign ups from people once the price comes out. Our wine is usually the least expensive by a wide margin.

I love hearing these stories now, so if you take one of our wines to an event, let us know how it did.

Seattle Pics

2011-01-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

Our friend Noelle posted pictures from our trip on her Facebook page and I stole my favorites.

Our Group.

Our fearless leader being a dork.

Fresh shrimp in cream sauce. We cooked every night except for the night of the football game. I think we went through just under 30 bottles of wine.

View from the deck of the Space Needle. Noelle took a great video of the fireworks show on New Years Eve.

We had sunny blue skies every day.

The view over Lake Union from the balcony. Watching seaplanes was a major distraction for everyone.

We did lots of shopping in Pike's Place Market. Lots of fresh seafood, cheese, a great duck and veggies.

It was cold for us Californians though with highs in the low 40's. We bundled up all the time.

We also spent a day in Woodinville tasting wine.

A great trip with great friends and Stefania had another fun birthday!

The Church

2011-01-10T18:28:00.000-08:00

Stefania and I have both had a cold since we got back from Seattle but Saturday morning we still decided to get out and prune the little church vineyard.

Santa Teresa Catholic church is around the corner from us in San Jose along Calero Avenue. We're not sure who put the vineyard in but it's now about 5 years old. The church is on our regular route to the Post Office, gas station and local independent coffee shop. A few years ago we notice that the vines were in terrible shape so I stopped by one day and told Father Chris I'd volunteer to take care of them.

There are just 20 plants and it's only 20-30 hours a year we have to put in, so it's not much of a burden to help keep the neighborhood looking nice.

Here you can see that it is a suburban vineyard, right along the street and next to the fire station. The trunks on the plants are a little funky from the first couple of years of neglect before we took over.

We have been able though to get the cordons and spurs trained properly as you can see below.

The plants are very low to the ground so it's a little hard to work, but not impossible. We've had to replace a few of the plants that died as well and the little ones are doing good. The little spot actually produces about 250 pounds of grapes. We'll continue to keep up on it all through the year.

Our Phone Policy

2011-01-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

In the trade magazines we get there have been lots of articles about direct marketing to your customers via the phone. It's the latest greatest craze. All the articles say that bigger wineries should even have a full time person who calls customers to make special offers, tell them about new releases and offer wine at discounts. These articles say smaller wineries should call as well and dedicate time to the effort.

Many of the wine boards have had discussions about wineries that have called them. Usually the call is about some sort of discount or special offer. Normally the tone of these discussions is that the wineries must be desperate to make a sale. From what I've read though it's just the start of a new trend of direct marketing.

We're not going to participate in this trend. We promise.

We do ask for a phone number when people sign up. We do that because UPS and GSO ask for a phone number when we ship. In case someone has forgotten to include it on their order form we can fill the info in without bothering them.

We have also used that sign up number a couple of times to call people when we had a question about an order they've placed. Usually we will try email first, but once or twice we've had to call. The only other time I can recall us using a phone number is when we've been going out to dinner with someone, either them visiting San Jose, or us visiting them and we've needed to call to coordinate plans.

That's it, that's the only time we'll use your phone number.

We also will never sell any information, emails, phone numbers, nothing to third parties. We have been contacted in the past with interest in buying our mailing list, and I've flat out refused to consider it. That also will never change.

We do love it though if you email us, or call, and especially when you come visit. Don't stop that please!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Every other year Paul takes me on a trip for New Years and my birthday. This past weekend was our year away and we spent it in Seattle with 6 of our friends. What a blast!

The condo we rented on Lake Union had a gorgeous view of the Olympic mountains, overlooked the lake and had an unobstructed view of the Space Needle. At 11:59 New Years Eve they light up the Space Needle with an eight minute long fireworks display, it was fantastic!! We popped a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon to toast the new year and promptly fell asleep at 12:12 a.m.

On Sunday we attended the Seattle Seahawks vs. St. Louis Rams game. After watching the Rams stomp, squish and otherwise annihilate the 49rs just the week before I thought for sure they would win and take the championship title. What a surprise!

Not knowing that the Seahawks are hosting the Saints this coming Saturday, I wore my Saints T-Shirt underneath a newly acquired Seahawks sweatshirt to the airport on our way home. I mention this only because I told the TSA agent that no, I was not going to remove my sweatshirt, and claimed I was shirtless underneath..."you want me to pass security in my bra? I don't think so". I got the full female pat down, which, for the record, is faster than taking the shirt off and on and less hassle with hair, glasses, earrings getting caught, etc. I figure he must have been a Rams fan...

At the market after we got home I couldn't help myself with a bag of fresh cranberries...with no plan on what to do with them I bought them anyway, and a fresh pineapple. After unpacking and settling in a bit, I got online and found a recipe for fresh made cranberry juice. It's amazingly easy.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5036084_make-cranberry-juice-fresh-cranberries.html

I like that on the weblink there is a Top Five Things to Try list and 3 contain alcohol, woohooo!

Cheers and Happy New Year everyone!

Full Moon Passed

2010-12-22T06:52:00.000-08:00

We've been pretty quiet the last few weeks. Stefania has wrapped up shipping and that kept her busy. Last Saturday we went to the winery to top up barrels. That's been about it.

Thursday though we'll start in with our vineyard work for 2011. Pruning will start and as usual we've waited until after the full moon. We could have started Tuesday but it's been raining and it's really not a task to do in the rain if we can avoid it. I'll try to get some pictures up as we work through all the vineyards. Before and afters especially and maybe a video or two on pruning techniques.

Our next major tasks in the winery won't come until after the 1st of the year when we'll start racking the 2010's as well as any 2009's that need it.

Our Hero

2010-12-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

Many of you who have come to visit us over the years have gotten to meet our friend Millie. If not at the winery, then at our home over a bottle of wine.

Millie has been helping us from the very start of Stefania Wine. There is literally not a single vine nor single bottle that she has not personally touched along the way. She's put in vineyard posts for us, planted vines, pruned, sprayed, driven the tractor a hundred times. She's bucketed wine at the press and done punch-downs on every lot. She's put wine into barrel and been there for bottling day.

She's hooked up electricity when we've needed it and built or fixed dozen of things we use in the vineyard and winery. Her usual job at bottling was to lift every single case of glass and start it on the bottling line. She's been covered in dirt, and sweat and wine more than once. There's no one we owe more to than Millie.

So many of you know Millie because she is so easy to talk too, quick to make a friend and generous in her spirit. There's nothing she enjoyed more than hanging out in our backyard and talking wine with people from all over the country.

This month Millie decided to move to Colorado to help her sister with a new house she'd purchased. We had a going away party for her and gathered friends to say good bye. We all hope that she'll decided to come back and that her stay is just temporary. Everyone will miss her a great deal.

Over the past couple of weeks we've gotten together with other friends and of course they've asked about Millie and we've told them about her move. Our friend from Tennessee asked Stefania and I how we'd cope with her being gone in the winery and vineyards. We didn't have an answer for him. It was in fact the first time we'd even thought about it. For us we've just been completely focused on her friendship. Getting her off on her trip safely and encouraging her to come back and visit us. We'd only missed her as a friend and hadn't thought about how it would impact the business.

We know that Stefania Wine will cope and we will figure out a way. For both Stefania and I though the personal relationship is so much more important. We wish Millie the best in Colorado. We do hope she will come back to us some day and we always will value her friendship, her great heart and all she's done for us.

Paul and Millie.

2008 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains

2010-12-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

Final of three in the series on our Winter Futures/Spring Release

Our 2008 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon is again a blend of three unique vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Elandrich Vineyard performed well during the season and yield was up slightly from 2007 at about 1600 pounds. The break down was 1000 pounds of Merlot, 500 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon, and 100 pounds of Zinfandel and just about 30 pounds of Syrah. The grapes were harvested on the morning of October 9th and crushed and destemmed at Chaine d’Or. Final Brix was 22.5 and pH was 3.47 Superfood was added to the bin and fermentation was on native yeasts. Fermentation took 12 days and the wine was gently pressed and transferred to a new Sequin Moreau barrel. An additional ½ barrel was added to the Haut Tubee blend.

The Chaine d ‘Or Estate Vineyard was under our first year of management and we took steps to limit yields and open the canopy for more ripeness and sunlight in the Cabernet section. Yields were further limited by natural conditions of the unusual season. The clusters and berries were very small and of intense flavor this season with complete ripeness coming in late October. Harvest took place on the morning of October 25th with a mostly volunteer crew and we finished in just over 2 hours, bringing in 1800 pounds of grapes or under one ton per acre. Brix at harvest was 26.5, a high for the site and pH was 3.42.

The grapes were 100% destemmed and crushed into a single t-bin. The natural, native yeasts of the estate were used and a Malolactic starter was added half way through fermentation. Punch downs were limited to one per day to minimize tannin extraction and in an effort to keep the wine from becoming too dark and intense. Fermentation was very gentle and extended for 23 days. The wine was gently pressed and transferred to tank to settle for 72 hours before being placed in one new sequin Moreau barrel and one used French oak barrel.

The blend included 250 pounds of estate Merlot that was harvested on October 9th. Those grapes were destemmed and crushed and began fermentation on native yeast in a 60 gallon tub. The must was combined with the Cabernet Sauvignon on 10/25. Small amounts of the estates Petite Verdot and Cabernet Franc were also added at harvest on October 25th.

The Harvest Moon Vineyard also saw yields down greatly in 2008 and we took just 2 tons from the vineyard vs. 8 tons we had hoped for. Harvest took place on October 26th and the grapes were transferred to Chaine d’Or for processing. Final numbers were Brix, 23.5 and pH 3.62. The grapes were destemmed and crushed into our 3 ½ ton stainless steel tank for fermentation on native yeast. Malolactic starter was added 10 day later. Fermentation was very slow and gentle and we used a combination of pump over’s and punch downs averaging one per day. We used a gentle routine in 2008 on all our Cabernet’s to minimize the huge tannins of the vintage.

The must completed fermentation on 11/17 after 22 days and was pressed into tank for 72 hours to settle. Due to the large solid to juice ratio, we had to climb into the tank and bucket out the large amount of must into the press. The wine was transferred to 3 new Sequin Moreau barrels and two neutral French oak barrels.

In the Spring of 2009 we combined the two barrels of Chaine d'Or with two barrels from Harvest Moon. That May the single barrel of Elandrich was added to the blend and an additional Harvest Moon barrel was chosen to provide topping wine. We racked the blended wine more often than usual in an effort to soften the tannins in the wine. The finished wine was bottled in August of 2010 after 22 months in barrel. The final blend is:

81% Cabernet Sauvignon
17% Merlot
1% Zinfandel
1 % Cab Franc

Tasting Note: The wine is dark hued tending to purple. The nose is classic Cabernet with plum, dark berry fruit and currants with a top note of spicy oak. In the mouth the wine shows more dark berry fruit, mocha, ripe currant and a touch of toast. The wine is very well structured and comes across as fresh even with the huge tannins. The structure, acidity and density reminds me a great deal of a Super Tuscan, being very well rounded. The finish is long with complex black fruits showing. Promises a very long life in bottle.

94 Cases Produced

Release: Spring of 2011

Release Price: $120 per 3 pack, $225 per six pack

2008 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Crimson Clover Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley

2010-12-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

Second in a series of three on our next releases....

In March of 2007 we received a call from a family looking for help in pruning a one acre vineyard. Usually we don't do single task jobs like that, preferring to manage our vineyards through all parts of maintenance so we have control over final quality. The homeowner though was desperate. The vineyard had been installed in 2005 and had not been pruned at all in 2006. I knew that if it was not properly pruned in 2007, the entire vineyard would have to be started over from scratch and wouldn't yield until 2010.

We went out with a small group of friends and spent two back breaking days of some of the hardest vineyard labor we've ever done. The plants had been left in grow tubes since planting in 2005. The plants were actually very healthy, but the grow tubes had limited the space the young vines could grow in. The result was that each plant had 8-20 stalks tightly wrapped like 5 inch thick rattan furniture.

We had to use large tree pruners to cut through the stalks until there was just one left. They were so thick and hard that our friend Kenneth and I were the only ones strong enough to cut away the stalks. Even then we had to do just 8-10 plants before talking a rest and letting the other person continue. Stefania led every one else on our pruning team. After we'd cut away the stalks and selected a new cordon the other pruners would debud the remaining stalk except for two buds that would become the new cordons. It was step, step lunge and repeat, 900 times.

That time in the vineyard though gave us a glimpse that this might be a very special place. The vineyard is located in a small valley between the Santa Teresa Foothills and the main Santa Cruz Mountains range. This particular vineyard is at the foot of 'El Toro' which is a 1200 foot high volcanic cinder cone. The small area around El Toro is the only place in the world to find Poppy Jasper which is formed when volcanic and seismic rocks are active in the same area.

This little valley has the most complex mix of soils we've ever seen, with the volcanic wash from El Toro combining with the lift thrust soils of the San Andreas fault. The weather also was near perfect. Fog rolled up into the vineyard every night from the Pacific to cool the vineyard, but burned off early in the morning leaving a warm sunny site during the day.

We decided to manage the vineyard through that summer and oversee its restoration. We decided to drop all the fruit in 2007 to allow the vines to build strength and fill out from our pruning efforts. By that Fall we were so confident in the vineyard's potential that we informed Ted and Bill at Uvas Creek that 2007 would be the last vintage we'd be buying fruit from them. In 2008 this would become the source for our Santa Clara Valley offering. We were very excited to see how the complex soil and excellent weather would influence the finished wine.

Our first harvest from these four year old vines was on Sunday September 28th. The vineyard was under our second year of management. We dropped @ 600 pounds of fruit in late August to balance out the plants and insure even ripening and then began a system of reverse deficit irrigation to slow down sugar levels to allow the flavors to mature.

Final numbers came in very ripe but with good acidity. Something we would see all year in 2008. Brix was 27.2 and pH came in at 3.53.

Harvest was with a mix of paid and volunteer crews and we picked just under 3200 pounds. The grapes were small, and intensely flavored. We transported them to Big Basin Vineyards for processing, then sorted and 100% destemmed the grapes, but did not crush the berries, opting for whole berry fermentation. The must was foot treaded several times until fermentation started. We again used native yeast fermentation. Fermentation took 18 days to complete and the wine was gently pressed and transferred to 2 new Sequin Moreau barrels and one old French oak barrel for 67% new wood treatment. Malolactic fermentation was begun in bin and completed in barrel.

As the wine matured at Big Basin the winemaker there began to ask us if he too could get fruit from this vineyard site. His quote was: "This is the best Cabernet I've tasted from the Santa Cruz Mountains." We racked the wine on a regular schedule over 22 months and it was transferred to Chaine d'Or for bottling in the summer of 2010. We bottled the wine in August 2010.

PS: That first day we arrived on site the vineyard was bright red from the Crimson Clover the homeowners had planted as a cover crop between the rows. We started referring to the site as 'Crimson Clover' right away.

Tasting Note: Bright and expressive on the nose with red fruit and spicy oak notes. A very complex wine with tons of red fruit flavors; berry, ripe cherry, raspberry with a coating of chocolaty mocha and spice. Darker fruit flavors come out as the wine opens up with blackberry, boysenberry, currant, and plum notes. There are just loads of fruit flavors in this wine that continue in the long finish. The wine is dense and well structured but the fruit flavors remain lifted and lively. I encourage people to try this wine young with a 60 minute decant. It will age well for 10+ years but I suspect people will have a hard time keeping their hands off this wine.

69 Cases Produced

Release: Spring of 2011

Release Price: $120 per 3 pack, $225 per six pack

2009 Stefania Chardonnay Chaine d'Or Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains

2010-11-30T17:27:00.000-08:00

First in a series of three on our next release.............

Compared to the 2008 season, 2009 was an easy year in the vineyard. We continued our efforts in the winter to lower the spurs on the old Chardonnay vines and the effort was 90% complete with almost all the fruit now back in the lower wire fruiting zone. With our third year of drought we decided to give the vineyard three doses of water in 2009. First we had to undertake an extensive check and repair of the drip system after two seasons of non use. The water was run for 4-6 hours on each occasion, in an attempt to simulate a summer storm. A final dose of rain on September 13th also assisted the vines.

Chardonnay harvest at Chaine d’Or was small for the estate, but we think this will be typical for us with our strict pruning and thinning routine. We picked on the morning of September 27th, using a crew of friends and our regular group of Jerry’s friends and family who are quickly gaining a reputation in the area as the best harvest crew available. The crew is paid by the hour, rather than by the bin and thus is meticulous in sorting and selection in the field. Picking bins arrive free of leafs or debris of any kind and substandard grapes are never picked.

It took just 5 hours to bring in 68 bins from the upper section and 81 from the lower section. A total of 149 bins or 4470 pounds was harvested. That is an average yield of 2.2 tons / acre. The fruit was healthy, and showed excellent golden maturity. The grapes were destemmed and pressed at once in our stainless steel bladder press. Final numbers were Brix 26, TA .93 and pH 3.62. The juice was transferred to a stainless steel tank where it was chilled to 54 degrees for 24 hours to encourage the gross lees to fall out.

On 10/5 the Chardonnay was transferred to 4 new barrels and 4 used barrels to continue fermentation. Superfood was again added and the juice was inoculated with Malolactic starter. On 10/12 the Chardonnay was reduced to 7 barrels with one old barrel removed. On 10/23 the Brix had reached -1% in each barrel and it was condensed down to a final 5 barrels (3 new, one 2008, one old) and a Keg and Carboy. Lees were stirred every two weeks to enrich the wine.

On April 4th we began the process to cold stabilize the wine by transferring it to tank and chilling the tank to 35 degrees. Sulfur was added to protect the wine and the wine was racked clean from its lees. On May 1st the wine was filtered and transferred to a second tank for bottling. Bottling was in early May and we decided to hold the wine into 2011 before release to allow it ample time to recover from the bottling process.

Tasting Note: The wine has a pronounced nose of pear, peach and ripe Fuji apple. There is a hint of spice and vanilla from the new oak. We delayed picking on 2009 to bring out more of these mature stone fruit flavors. In the mouth the wine is rich, deep and broad with mouth coating density. The fruit flavors are sweet and long. The wine finishes with sweet pear and apple fruit. The 60% new oak is well blended and lifted by the wines racy acidity. This is a big racy wine that remains fresh and lifted by it's acidity.

123 Cases Produced.

Release: Spring of 2011

Release Price: $75 per 3 pack, $140 per six pack

A special note on our Chardonnay: This past summer Paul's mother lost her partner and companion of over 20 years William 'Bill' Jansen to Pulmonary Fibrosis. Bill came out often to help us work in the vineyards and support our efforts. Bill's favorite wine was our Chardonnay and we will donate $1 from every bottle sold in his name to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. http://www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org/

Orders, Availability, Futures

2010-11-29T17:10:00.000-08:00

Stefania and I stopped at UPS this morning, and GSO is coming by the house tonight. We have now shipped all orders that came in before last Monday. There were a few odds and ends and a group of magnums that needed to go out. They are all in transit now.

We are completely out now of wine from our last release. The 08 Haut Tubee, 08 Syrah and 08 Pinot Noir are all gone. We do still have a small amount of the three 07's left (Eaglepoint Syrah, Uvas Creek Cab and Santa Cruz Mountains Cab). Those will be available for reorders until the first of the year. By then I suspect we'll be at a low enough level to pull them back into the Library.

This week I'll start to put up vineyard and winemaking notes on the three wines in our next release. Our Futures offer will also go out this week on those three wines via email. The general release will be in mid February for everyone not on the Futures List and will feature the same three wines.

Pictures I Owe People

2010-11-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

I put this one first just so that everyone knows we have been doing some work and not just playing around. We pressed the Split Rail Syrah this week and this is the press in action. Sofie is guarding the press for us.

This one is for Tim from the Wine Berserkers Forum. He had asked about getting a basket press to work more efficiently and I explained these inserts that Millie made for us a few years ago. The one on the left comes with the press and we made the ones on the right. They let you get better pressure on the press and turn the crank harder by being more stable in the basket than the small wood blocks the press comes with.

This picture was in response to a couple of threads on the Wine Spectator Forum. One asked about what type of car you drove. Another was about Fall shipping. I explained that the FJ Cruiser can hold about 20 cases of wine at a time. Here's the car stuffed with boxes and ready to go to UPS.

I just thought this last one was funny. The ultimate low rent RV set up. It's a pick up truck with a BBQ and a toilet tied down in the bed. Everything you need to tailgate at the big game.

A Twelve Year Old on a Bicycle

2010-11-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

In my first year of college I took a class called "Introduction to Mass Media". It was the first class for people who were going to major in Journalism. For me it was a social science elective and one I thought would be interesting. It turned out to be an excellent class.

It offered an overview of book and magazines, TV, radio and newspapers. It covered production, as well as reporting and outlined journalistic standards and methods. Since the class was aimed at Journalism majors a great deal of time was spent on ethics and proper techniques and verification of facts.

There was also a lot on actual production. The class took an approach that if you were going to work for a newspaper you had to know the technical details of how a paper was put together and got to press. This way you understood deadlines and limitations around the production side of the business and how that shaped what you could write.

One of the quotes I remember from the professor was about TV News; "It's not news if you don't have video." His point was that in TV, no matter what the story, if you didn't have a picture to go with it, it wasn't going to get on the air.

When we got to the section on newspapers he had another rant I remember. It went something like this:

"The newspaper industry is one of the most amazing in the country. Papers are staffed by well educated skilled professionals with years of writing and editing experience. The sales departments have some of the brightest minds in advertising and marketing. Production is done on state of the art high tech equipment costing millions of dollars and run by skilled craftsman who usually have decades of experience. Then the entire product is delivered by a twelve year old on a bicycle."

I always remember that quote during shipping season. We do everything we can to insure that shipping goes well, but it always comes down to a delivery guy in a truck. Our latest drama was a simple keying error. The guy at the UPS office added an 'N' for North on an address that should not have had it. The driver, like a corpulent twelve year old, decided he was not going to deliver the box to 59 Main Street, because the address said 59 N Main Street. Even though there was no N Main Street. 'Undeliverable'.

Frustrating, time consuming and expensive. UPS charged us $11 to take the N off the package, even though they had put the N on the package. Makes me wish we had a twelve year old and a bike.

Dungeness Crab Season OPEN

2010-11-16T12:14:00.001-08:00

The ships go out...the crab gets boiled...it goes in my fridge...I bake some bread. Hungry Yet?

The only thing I didn't have a photo of already was the pound of butter or the Chardonnay bottle(s) on ice.

Cheers!!

New Vineyard Layout

2010-11-15T10:08:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning Stefania and I headed to a new site where we will help install a vineyard this winter. The site is actually close to our home, just about 1 1/2 miles away. There's a range of hills in the way though so no direct road and we end up driving about 8 miles to get to the site.

This site is in the Santa Teresa Foothills above Almaden Valley. I think this little range of hills is very exciting for grape growing. The Santa Teresa Foothills are the same small chain of volcanic hills that extends down to Morgan Hill where our Crimson clover vineyard is located. All along the chain there are a series of valleys that divide the volcanic soils of the Santa Teresa Foothills from the lift-thrust soils created by the San Andreas fault that forms the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The result is really complex and layered soils with a mix of shattered Franciscan limestone based soils and volcanic based soils often layered in the same location. That's the case at Crimson Clover. This location is more like the Uvas Creek vineyard which is also located on a south-west slope of the Santa Teresa Foothills. The volcanic soils dominate here, and there's a great band of Terra Rosa soil through the site.

If you look closely behind Stef and Joan you can see a volcanic formation of rocks. This hill was once an active vent of a volcanic system.

This picture should look a little like our label. That's Mount Uhmunum in the background with the old radar tower. The site is at about 350 feet with a southern exposure and a slope of about 10 degrees. The homeowner is going to plant Mourvedre, which we think is an exceptional grape in this location. Eventual production should be about 1 to 1 1/2 tons.

This was a very difficult site to lay out. The vineyard area is about a 1/4 acre bounded on all four sides by fencing. The problem was none of the fences run parallel or at right angles to each other. Visually as your in the vineyard this creates an effect of having the vineyard layout look off kilter. It took us a little time to settle on a layout design. Eventually we went with something that will look very nice from the patio above the vineyard. When you're down in the vineyard it will still look a little odd with end posts seemingly scattered about, but from the house it will look like straight rows running across the hill.

The drip system will be installed in a couple weeks, then Jerry will put in the end posts. We will plant in March and run wires later in the spring. I'm sure there will be more pictures to follow.

Late Pumpkin Carving Pictures

2010-11-14T09:57:00.000-08:00

This year we decided not to have a harvest grape stomp party. The timing was just bad and we were not sure we'd have grapes to bring in. We did though have Stefania's pumpkin carving party.

I buy a half ton bin of pumpkins from Spina Farms and Jerry and I set them up around the yard. It works out to about $2.50 for a super large pumpkin this way so a pretty good deal. We had a few rain showers pass through just before the party was supposed to start so we had to make a quick change from the backyard to the front yard where there would be more cover.

'Super Size' pumpkins. This one was about 25 pounds I think. IN all we had about 60 to choose from and ended up carving about 40.

This lead to a rare scene of an abandoned bar. Not that anyone was without a drink though. We had about 20 limes ready on one of the trees in the backyard so I made margarita's for everyone.

This picture isn't really related, it was from a few days before as we headed up to the winery. It is our traditional harvest time picture though and from the coldest morning we've had to work outside in this harvest season. (So Far)

2008 Magnums Available

2010-11-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

We bottled a tiny number of magnums of our Fall Release wines. The magnums were only offered to Futures List customers this summer, we did not include them in the regular mailer because we had so few to go around. We do have a few left though and I thought I'd put them up here and on Facebook for those of you who follow us daily.

Here's what we have:

2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains

Bottles available: 2 $108 per bottle.

2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch Mendocino County

Bottles available: 3 $80 per bottle.

First come first serve. 9.25% Sales Tax on CA deliveries. Shipping on these is $5 in CA/AZ/NV and $10 every where else.

Shipping and Inventory

2010-11-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Stefania is about half way through shipping right now. She sent out about half of the IL and MN orders yesterday as well as some for DC. She still has a few California orders to go and we're waiting on weather in Arizona. There's still a lot of work to do though but Stef says she's on track to get everything out by Thanksgiving.

I did an inventory check yesterday and we're sold out on 2008 Haut Tubee, 2008 Syrah and that means 2008 combo packs are sold out as well. We have 4 cases of 2008 Pinot Noir left. I'll hold those Pinot Noir's for anyone interested in reorders or for any late requests that come in.

I do have some magnums left as well. We offered those to our Futures list but not the general list. There are just a few. I think we have 4 Syrah and 3 Pinot Noir magnums left. I'll likely put those up here and/or on Facebook as a special offer in the next week or so. If you haven't added us as a friend yet it's www.facebook.com/stefaniawine. It's not a fan page, it's my personal page. We don't have a fan or company site, that's just not our style.

The Three Day Weekend (Part two)

2010-11-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning we got to sleep in for a bit and didn't leave the house until 9 am. First I loaded 20 or so cases into the car then we stopped by the store to pick up some snacks and headed to the winery. It was 'Pick Up Day' at the winery and we were hosting an open house from 11-3. Stefania and I got everything set up by 11 am and the 20 cases unloaded.

Our friend Jaye joined us at 11 to help pour and answer questions from everyone. We had a fairly large group come through for us and were busy until weel after 3:00 PM. Having Jaye was a huge help and it let Stef and I talk with more people and even walk a few people through on tours.

We headed home about 4:30. We had planned on going back to the winery on Sunday and putting the Harvest Moon and Haut Tubee into barrel. We sat in the backyard for a bit and I smoked a cigar and Stef smoked some cherry tobacco in her pipe while we had a glass of wine.

The house was in chaos. We hadn't been able to do laundry in over a week. The office was stacked with mail, the fridge was empty of food except for leftovers and beer botles and there were still dishes out from take out food Friday night. Both of us where full of aches and pains and I made an executive decision: we'd take the next day off.

We slept in and had coffee in bed. Then we headed to the local supermarket and spent $200. It was our first trip to the store in weeks that wasn't to just pick up something we were out of. With the fridge restocked we headed home. I turned on the football game and started laundry going and Stef cleaned up the kitchen and fridge. I made us turkey club sandwiches for lunch and started a fire in the fireplace.

Even though the day was full of chores it felt so relaxing. We finally had the house back in order and fresh laundry hung up. For dinner we handmade cheese raviolis and a sausage sauce. Stef watched the Simpsons and I was asleep by 9:00 PM. When we woke up Monday morning we both agreed it was the first time we'd really felt rested when waking up in months. I headed off to the day job and Stef spent the day loading up shipments to the East Coast. We'll tackle the barreling on Wednesday, it was good to have a down day.

The Three Day Weekend (Part one)

2010-11-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Friday I took a PTO day from my day job. I hope it's my last for awhile, I'm down under 60 hours now of time off. There was rain in the forecast though for Friday night so we knew it was time to bring in the last of our grapes for this year.

I left the house at 7:15 to get cash out from the bank and put gas in the car. I'd need the cash to pay the picking crew for the day. I was also down to a quarter tank of gas and knew I'd put a lot of miles on for the day. It turned out to be 156 miles in all. I was back at home at 7:30 and Millie, Jerry and our small picking crew of three were waiting for me. Stefania was already outside and we loaded up in less than two minutes and where on the road to the Split Rail vineyard.

The trip took just about 70 minutes. We were slowed a little by traffic in Santa Cruz and then by a slow moving truck on the one lane road above Corralitos on the way to the vineyard site. When we arrived Ian Brand had picked about 60 pounds of grapes and his two volunteer pickers had just arrived on site.

Things moved pretty quickly. Our experienced pickers made short work of the vineyard and Stefania and I sorted grapes as they brought them in. It gave me a chance to catch up with Ian some. For the past two months we've talked, emailed or texted almost daily, but I don't think we've had a conversation over 5 minutes in length. Both too busy. In all we took about 3/4 of a ton from the vineyard this year. The extra week helped a lot. Ian thought the brix would be 23. I guessed 25. Stef would measure it at 25 later in the day. It was 21.6 just two weeks ago.

It was about a 75 minute drive then to the winery. When we arrived Millie took the picking crew out into the vineyard to start picking the Chaine d'Or Cabernet that could be salvaged. Stefania started doing punchdowns and getting her lab ready to take readings on the incoming fruit. Jerry and I hooked up all the hoses and equipment we'd need to process the fruit, then he and I crushed it all in just under 30 minutes total time.

Stef let me know that the readings on the Harvest Moon showed it was time to press the must. We had wanted to wait to do that and were hoping the brix was still around 4 or 5 so we could wait out through more rain on Sunday. We can't press in the rain, we don't have a cover large enough to cover the press. So after a little discussion we decided we'd just muscle through and press that day.

I headed down into the vineyard next to check on the crew and sort what they had picked so far. Our plan was to pick into 30 lb bins and then dump into a 1/2 ton bin I had loaded on the back of the tractor. That way I could sort each bin after it was picked. The crew was moving slowly. They were cutting out bad grapes on clusters with mixed good and bad as we had done with the Chardonnay. I knew we wouldn't have time for that so I changed them up to just picking good clusters and leaving the rest.

In the end we pulled about 400 pounds of Cabernet out of the vineyard. More than we thought we could save back in August, but still a tiny amount. We processed that fruit and then everyone pitched in to clean up and make the switch over in equipment from crushing to pressing. Bins were cleaned and the pump cleaned and refitted. The hoses were switched out and the used ones cleaned. The crusher was cleaned and the press prepared. It took about 45 minutes to make the change over.

Everyone then pitched in to load the press. We transferred two full bins of Harvest Moon Cabernet. It's a messy operation and Millie splashed the most juice on herself by far. I was able to kick of the auto-program at 3:30 though and get the press going. At that point I paid two of our helpers and Millie took them back to their car in San Jose. Estella, Jerry's wife had made us all sandwiches and Stef and I were able to eat ours as the press ran.

Jerry and Gill finished cleaning up from the picks and then they too got to relax for a bit while we let the press cycle through. After about 30 minutes of break time I decided to take on another chore that needed doing. We had built two compost heeps in the lower vineyard with the stems and pressing from earlier lots. Jerry Anderson asked if we could move those as they were in the line of sight of the neighbors backyard, spoiling their view.

The spent pressing were pretty easy to move. I scooped them up with the tractors bucket and spread them down the rows as fertilizer. The stem piles where a little harder, at least for me. I can now add 'bulldozing' as a winemaking related skill I have. Turns out there is a significant art to bulldozing, especially on a grade. If you go in too high, or don't drop the bucket just right, you skim right over the top of the pile. Go in too low and you dig the bucket in and rear up the tractor on its back wheels. Eventually I got it all pushed out of sight though.

I got back up to the crushpad in time to finish up with the press. We left the dry pressings in the press and loaded in the Haut Tubee to be pressed next. I set that on a slightly shorter cycle. I knew we were loosing sunlight and cleaning the press at night is almost impossible. AS it was we did finish after dark which resulted in my most painful injury of the season. I was spreading out the pressings in the vineyard from the Haut Tubee pressing after we finished and it was dark in the vineyard. Even though I had the headlights on on the tractor I never saw the vine that smacked be just below the eye. I had a red welt for a few days.

We finished cleaning up in the dark by flashlight, but were able to return all the harvest equipment back to storage for the winter. Stefania and I left about 7:30 and were back home by 8:15.

Bluefin Restaurant San Jose

2010-11-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

I'm promoting local businesses that I'm fond of and since last night was dinner at Bluefin I thought I'd write them up today.

http://www.bluefinsj.com/

I didn't think they got a very fair write-up by the Metro or was it the Mercury News...I forget who did the review, but the author basically ranted about serving endangered fish and how it was bad for the environment etc etc.

The two sushi chefs at the counter are very personable, the staff is friendly and knowledgeable and the food is supreme. They take extra care in selecting only the best fish flown in directly from Japan and the quality is noticeable. Last night I had something I wouldn't trust to any other chef no matter what, it was Kobe beef "sushi"; raw beef chopped with sesame oil, soy sauce, over rice and wrapped in nori.

And as a special request, they made me an Uni Shooter (usually with a raw oyster, but I like the sauce with the Uni - sea urchin), very briny and clean.

As an environmentalist, I'm more concerned about the number of plastics that end up in the ocean, not the amount of fishing. Is Bluefin a great restaurant? Yes, I highly recommend it.

Hope to see some of the locals up at the winery on Saturday, we'll have our OpenHouse 11-3.

Open House This Saturday

2010-11-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Please join us Saturday Nov 6th for our bi-annual open house and Fall Pick up day. We will be pouring samples from our Fall release as well as past vintages and preview barrel samples from upcoming releases.

If you selected 'pick up' on your Fall order form your wine will be available for pick up at the winery.

There is a lot going on in the winery right now and we'll demonstrate punchdowns and show you the active fermentations we have going right now. There will be snacks and the famous open house hot dog cooker may come out if weather permits.

Complete directions are at:

http://www.chainedor.com/directions.html

.......Update......

This was the official invite that I sent out this past weekend. We will have just crushed the Estate Cabernet and Split Rail Syrah the day before the Open House. We should have 5-6 active fermentation bins going and we will do punchdowns on each one.

Here I Am

2010-10-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

Stefania has been doing most of the blogging lately but I'm still around. Every time I think I'm going to write a blog the only thing that comes to mind is what particular part of my body is sore at the moment (shoulders and right hamstring right now) and I know that's just not that interesting to people.

I did take one of our traditional start of day pictures though last week. It was a late start to the day at 8:40 AM, and that was because we knew if we got to the winery before 9:30 it would be in the high 30's there. It was 45 in our driveway in San Jose. Cold and pain, not compelling blogging I'm afraid.

Things are moving along though. We've pressed the Crimson Clover Cabernet and it's in tank settling before going into barrel. I'm really happy with that wine and think it will be the highlight of 2010. The 'Franken-Pinot-Stein' is also in tank, still slowly fermenting. Right now it taste and looks like a Port. We're not sure what we'll do with it but we're hopeful we've fixed all the major issues.

We filled a half barrel with Chardonnay. That's all we have for 2010. We may buy some grapes from the Coastview Vineyard to have more Chardonnay but we're just not sure right now and have to decide in a couple of days. The Haut Tubee is finishing up in tank and we'll likely press that on Sunday. There are also two bins of Harvest Moon Cabernet fermenting away right now.

Next week we'll likely harvest the Split Rail Syrah and salvage what we can of the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Once everything is in from the vineyard we should have another 3 -4 weeks or so of fermenting, pressing and settling. It looks like we should finish up around December 1st. Another long harvest season for us.

Best Artisan Chocolates? Dolce Bella in SJ!!

2010-10-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

I met Audrey Vaggione at an event at the Capital Club downtown SJ a couple of years ago...she is awesome!!

The email invitation I received recently was to announce their Grand Opening this Saturday, October 30th at a new location in San Jose.

The link to her website is here:

http://www.dolcebellachocolates.com/

Go visit and sample her creations, you'll be hooked.

FrankenWine

2010-10-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

It's almost Halloween so it's fitting to talk about the FrankensteinWine in tank right now.

Brix came in under 50 (that's a joke), and the initial sulfur tests came back off the charts. Fun.

So I generally don't like what Laurie Daniels writes about for the local newspaper in her wine column. But today she actually got it right when she said this is a year that winemakers will need to put all their skills to work. Sure it's awesome when we don't have to intervene with the process, but there is always something that needs to be monitored.

This year, we are using all our skills with the FrankenWine (that's what we started calling it). We've added plenty of water hoping to get the sugars balanced, tartaric acid to fix the pH, and copper sulfide to fix the sulfur stink. And let me tell you what, this wine stunk like butt the first two days it was fermenting. We fixed that asap and it's no longer detectable, but I kept having to reassure guests that no, I didn't in fact just fart.

As of today, the wine is inside the winery in tank with the heat lamps on to help push it through the last stages of fermentation, we're at 3.8brix, we should have been at zero by now....we're trying not to freak out, but we are.

Everything else is going along as normal, the year wasn't a total loss but it has had some interesting challenges that's for sure.

"It made a loud popping sound and then...."

2010-10-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

The day started at 7:30 a.m., it wasn't too bitter cold yet, but it was overcast and the clouds were rolling in for the first real rain of the season.

By noon, Paul and I had transferred 2 tons of pinot, bucket by bucket, into the press. We got one short break and then Gerry showed up with the first of two truckloads of cabernet.

The three of us processed that first ton, manually into the crusher. We were about 3/4 done when the guy we sold used barrels to showed up with his truck. No break before loading up a dozen barrels...but wait! Just as Paul was getting ready to pull down the first rack of empties, Big Joe died.

Paul came out from inside and said, did you hear that loud POP? (we didn't, the press was running) that was Big Joe, it's dead. So, for the rest of the barrel moving, no forklift...Super.

Gerry, Paul, and I ran relays with the hand truck and hoisted barrels and racks, up and over hoses and around various obstacles.

Next day we had the repair guy come out...his van.

The new batteries in Big Joe...

The deceased batteries...

And then, because I think I figured out how to take video and get it uploaded...a shot of the fog rolling in the other night (a couple days back) as we were wrapping up and leaving for the day.

Shipping Update

2010-10-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a number of calls and emails about shipping. We did include a note about shipping dates on the back of the order form but I think next time I need to put it on the front where it's easier to find.

We're going to start shipping the first week of November. This year we decided to wait until after all the picking was done before shipping. Last year we tried to manage both at the same time and it was too much. Shipping is pretty labor intensive and time consuming but it also takes up a lot of office time. Stef ends up spending a couple hours each day during shipping season answering phone calls and emails and sending out tracking numbers.

We thought it would be better to do that when she's not having to spend all day out in the vineyard so that's why we waited to ship. We expect everything will go out by Thanksgiving. We'll likely start working from East to West so that everyone has wine by the Thanksgiving weekend. If you need yours sooner let us know.

The Best Restaurant and Bar in San Jose

2010-10-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't been at home for a birthday since 1995. It's been 15 years of being out of town. Since 2001 Stefania and I have spent the day in New Orleans. It feels a little weird not to be in NOLA right now, but the schedule just didn't work out this year with the day falling on a Tuesday and the mad rush of harvest zooming up on us.

We actually don't go out a great deal any more in San Jose. We do have some great restaurants in town, but now it's maybe twice a month we head out. That's because I think we have the best restaurant and bar in town in our house.

Tonight we're going to start with a cocktail. It will be shaken just right in an ice cold glass just to order. We'll probably have the baseball games on the TVs behind the bar, at least until hockey comes on at 7:30. We may have cigars on the patio next, or maybe we'll save that until after dinner.

Stef already ran out to the store, she's going to make a fresh wedge salad with bacon, and blue cheese dressing. The dressing will be from scratch with Point Reyes blue and a mix of chopped veggies. She's promised some bread made from scratch too and steamed broccoli. She has some rib eyes that I'll do on the grill. For wine we'll pick a bottle or two from our cellar. I''m leaning to our 07 Santa Cruz Mountains Cab, I really like that wine. Or maybe a Cline Mourvedre or a 1998 La Mission Haut Brion. I know our wine list is pretty good!

It's just hard to beat that in a restaurant. We've joked that all we need to do is hire a waitress / dish cleaner and it's the perfect set up. We'd never leave home. Tonight I can't think of a better way to spend by birthday.

New Orleans 2010

2010-10-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

The Joint

10 Picnic Tables and some patio seating at The Joint

Pulled Pork, coleslaw and beans...at The Joint

This would be all I can afford from Natalie anymore, a bid on her paint stained stereo, or maybe one of her soiled smocks...we did get a good couple of visits in with her though.

I took two other photos on the trip, more outdoor shots of The Joint, by now you should have picked up on the idea that I really liked this place. Next time I'm trying the ribs and brisket, but I have to say, the pulled pork sandwich was awesome.

From low brow to high end in the same day we had dinner at Stella. Amuse Bouche was a play on sushi; watermelon "maguro", cantaloupe "ginger", and honeydew "wasabi" with a drop of balsamic "soy".

I had the egg, lobster, caviar to start and Paul had foie gras. He had a carrot salad that I can't really describe other than "just ok and too esoteric", I ordered the soup, salad, and grilled cheese...all just bites to whet the appetite and very pleasing to taste. For the mains, I had an awesome swordfish steak over a ratatouille garnish that would have been appropriate for a pork chop too (just sayin') and Paul had veal medallions. Dessert was a cheese plate and artisan sweets made in-house (nougat, caramel, ganache, marshmallow).

They offer an extensive vodka and caviar menu if you are so inclined...$425/oz for barrel-broke winemakers didn't fit our budget this year.

Our third new place to dine this trip was Mr. B's Bistro. I was craving BBQ Shrimp (these are not actually grilled or in anyway resembling something off the bbq) and was not disappointed with their sauce. Paul ordered the pasta jambalaya and said it was good. We polished off a housemade pecan pie that was so rich it was the only real sweet treat the whole trip and it made up for not having a single praline or beignet. Ronda swears they make the best GumboYaYa, so I'll try that next trip.

Of course we ate at Coops and popped in several times for drinks and snacks. Fay still makes a mean bloody mary.

Missed dinner at GW Fins on account of the evening getting away from us...we popped in there at 11 not knowing what time it really was, sadly the kitchen was closed. There is a new place on Bourbon St, a tequila bar with simple mexican eats...beats a hand grenade and lucky dog for dinner. Yep, we got distracted with new friends we met over margaritas and chips/salsa, headed back there for a late quesadilla.

Treated ourselves to an early anniversary dinner at Bayona, still an all time favorite. Susan Spicer inspires me to replicate her creamed soups at home. This time it was potato leek. The pork chop was fantastic and Paul had the rabbit...both were excellent entrees. More cheese for dessert.

Other highlights? Our home away from home, Down on Dauphine (rental from vrbo) and the courtyard there...the little green lizard came to see us in the afternoons when we played cards.

We got a lot of visiting in with Natalie, Michael from Monterey (next door to Natalie), Ronda and Walt at Louisiana LoomWorks, our part time neighbors at DoD, and Fay over at Coops. And there was napping, lots of afternoon zzzz's.

Back to winemaking this week, the message this morning from Millie was that the pinot cap dropped.

Fall Release Status

2010-10-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

We had a little spat of orders this weekend that mostly came in over the phone and via email. I knew we were running low on some items so Stefania did a count for me Monday afternoon.

We are now out of the 2008 Eaglepoint Syrah. There is just enough left to do combo packs so if your allocation was for a combo pack we can still do those. We're very low on Haut Tubee as well. It looks like just about 6 cases left. There's about the same amount of Pinot Noir left. We should be good for another week or two I think if the current ordering pace continues.

The thing that made me think of doing a count was a note from a customer in Afghanistan who thought he might be too late. As an official company policy it's never too late for anyone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to order. Stefania and I do keep a couple of cases of each wine for ourselves and we're happy to share those in emergency situations. This was our 5th order I could remember from someone on active duty in the Middle East and that's a big part of why we keep those couple of cases on the side.

Crimson Clover 2010

2010-10-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning we gathered friends and our small crew and harvested the Crimson Clover vineyard. This is a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard we've been making wine from now since 2008.

Jerry had gotten us all ready to pick on Friday and Saturday. Friday he took down all the picking and harvest bins and Sunday he and a friend removed the bird netting. Saturday morning Stefania and I rented the extra truck we'd need before we headed out to the winery for the day. That left us to just pick grapes Sunday morning.

Here is the first fruit coming in from the picking bins and going into the harvest bins.

The hill in the background is an old cinder cone so the vineyard has a high amount of volcanic soil. The valley though is a fault, thrust valley so there's a complex mix of soils.

The rows here are cleaner than in our steep vineyards. There's not as much need to keep the ground cover in place and prevent erosion. At the end of the rows in this picture you can see people picking grapes. It goes best if there is one person on each side of the row so you don't have to reach through the vine to cut fruit. You still have to stagger though and not work the exact same part off the vine at the same time. That leads to cut fingers.

This is Jerry's wife Estella and his cousin. Both are part of the little group we call 'The A Team', of our best pickers. When we've sorted after 'The A Team' picks we remove on average less than 1lb of bad grapes and debris for every 2000 pounds picked. They know their grapes and know how to keep bins clean.

I wore myself out Sunday. My Mom and Stefania did the sorting at the truck and I ran bins back and forth. I should have let the younger guys do that. It's basically lifting 30lbs on your shoulder and carrying it 50-100 yards and dumping it in the truck. Then repeat that about 140 times. To top it off I lifted all the grapes again in 20 pound buckets at the crusher. My shoulder still hurts.

We have a few days off now though to recover.

Pops Birthday & Sh*t My Husband Says

2010-10-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

We watched the Giants game lastnight (that was disappointing), and one of the commercial breaks was for Conan's new show.

At the completion of the 30-second ad, Paul turns to me and says, "I wouldn't watch Conan if he was on fire in my front yard". And so we have our first installation of Sh*t My Husband Says.

This on the eve of his dad's birthday, and where Paul gets some of his crustyness.

Just this morning, I leaned over Paul's shoulder to see what he was posting and he too was channeling pops:

It's my Dad's birthday today. He's 68,69 or 70, depends on what set of paperwork you're looking at. Record keeping in rural New Mexico circa 1940 wasn't so great.

I love it when I hear people now talk about their dogs. What park they like best, what treat is their favorite, what toy is the best. I especially like the discussions about where the dog sleeps. End of the bed, middle of the bed, its own bed, ect.

My Dad's reply to where does the dog sleep would be; "I don't know ask the dog."

That's my reply to the question of where do the yeast come from: "I don't know ask the yeast".

They work, I like how the wine comes out, and they finish my ferments. I have not built my yeast friends into any kind of dogma, and I don't particularly think they need a marketing program. I'm happy they are there, like an old ranch dog, but I don't really care where they sleep at night.

_________________
stefaniawine.blogspot.com

ITB - Tour Guide, Truck Driver, Cleaner of Things, Winemaker

from: http://www.wineberserkers.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32114&p=426103#p426103

Ten Photos in Random Order

2010-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

Wine Amplified main stage, our cabana was where the blue orb light is, just left of the stage!
And there is Paul smiling in front of our cabana before the event.

I was at the Crimson Clover Vineyard earlier this week and pulled samples, it's ready for an early Sunday morning harvest. I saved a robin that got caught in the netting.

Closer view of the Crimson grapes, don't look for the robin, he's long gone...

The "estate" Mourvedre grapes were harvested and tossed in with the rest of the Haut Tubee grapes from three other little vineyards.

The Haut Tubee Syrah, and just under that a close-up, not to show how awesome the grapes look, they do, but to show why I don't like to use any tape, twine, or other device to tie the cordons to wire. The green tie is cutting into the vine. We had to tie them that first year of retraining, but after pruning I'll go back and properly wrap the cordon around the wire.

Testing TA on the pinot...sugar came in a little high.

The pinot.

Teaching Jerry how to play gin rummy while we waited for the 2nd bin of pinot.

Recycle Glass Week

2010-10-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

Our sales guy Ron is always asking me about recycling wine bottles and how that works, so just for him, I'll copy over some text from a mailer that arrived today.

According to The Wine Mirror, Recycle Glass Week was September 12-18th (just got the mailer today, 10/6).

Glass containers, such as wine bottles, beer bottles, and glass jars, are endlessly recyclable without a loss of quality or purity. The recycled crushed glass, known as cullet, is used to replace or supplement raw materials, including sand, soda ash and limestone. Turning recycled glass into new containers requires an average of 40% less energy than is required for raw materials alone. For every six tons of recycled container glass used, a ton of carbon dioxide is reduced in the process.

Regardless of color, all container glass can be recycled. To produce Flint (clear) glass, cullet needs to be color-sorted in order to avoid putting too much colorant to finished glass. Optical resorting systems allow us to do this but, ideally, glass should be sorted by color as in some countries, such as Switzerland and New Zealand.

SGCI 2010 * Special Issue, A Verallia Publication

I pulled that directly off the mailer - there are a few other tips, like removing metal capsules from the glass before recycling, but that's about it. I looked up Verallia.com and found a link to their recycling info page, http://www.verallia.com/all-about-glass/recycling/?lang=en

Ok, so they are in France and it's not directly relevant to recycling in the U.S. but mostly I wanted to poke fun at receiving the mailer three weeks past the date of the event. :-p

Busy Days

2010-10-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a recap of the past few days.

Thursday we spent all day at the winery.

Friday we started the day with picking Chardonnay at Chaine d'Or. Most of the Chardonnay had been damaged by sunburn so we knew this would be a difficult process. We set up the shaded table below to cut out sunburned berries one at a time. It was a long slow process and at most we think we'll have enough Chardonnay just for personal use at parties from 2010.

When we were done at the winery we had to drive down to Aptos to drop of bins for the next days pick. We got home after 9PM.

It was a long, slow day of mostly waiting. We finally left the vineyard at 3PM with only half the grapes we were expecting. We couldn't wait any longer. There's not enough outdoor lighting at the winery to work in the dark and it is an hour drive from Aptos to Woodside.

We processed just under one ton of Pinot Noir. The fruit was very ripe and we had to add about 14 gallons of water to lower the sugar to a level that will ferment ok. This will be a hard wine for us to make. Usually we just take initial readings, add yeast food and then check Brix daily. With the high Brix, and water addition on this we'll have to take full readings all along and continue to add yeast food through fermentation.

Saturday we also had to transfer the Chardonnay out of the settling tank and into a tank to ferment. We're going to do a stainless steal fermentation this year. Mostly because the amount is so small.

I know I've talked before about how we wrap all our bins in plastic to keep bees out but I've never posted a picture before. Here's what the bin looks like with the top on and sealed in plastic wrap. There's a ton of Pinot Noir fermenting inside.

Sunday we had another busy morning of punch downs and taking readings at the winery. We also had to be at the truck rental at 7AM to return the truck from Saturday.

Monday the last 3/4 of a ton of Pinot Noir came in and we processed it in the morning. The Brix was not as high but we still added 8 gallons of water. It was just Stefania, Jerry and I working but we still managed to get home at 3PM after cleaning the winery.

Tuesday I'll be back at my day job. Stefania and Jerry are going to harvest and process three of the Haut Tubee vineyard (home, Church and OttiGurr) on their own. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it. It will be the first processing I've ever missed. Stef knows her stuff inside and out though and I know she'll do a great job, it's just weird to miss it. I hope they will make it home before 5PM.

Waiting is the Hardest Part.

2010-10-02T14:15:00.002-07:00

We are at the vineyard in Aptos now waiting on the picking crew to finish. We knew this would be a slow pick. The clusters are small and spaced apart. That slows a crew down a lot. Still we hoped to be on the road by 1 PM. Now it looks like 4PM at the soonest. That will crate a bunch of logistical issues for us.

Worst of those issues is we'll be stuck in traffic on hwy 17 heading back towards San Jose. Traffic returning from the beach is at the worst from 4-6 PM. We'll also have to finish processing the fruit in the dark tonight. We're really not set up for that at Chaine d'Or so it will be tough.

We also won't be able to get a weight tag. The public scales all close at 5PM and there is no way we can get an empty weight today. It will be a long night. Suspect we will finish well after 10 PM.

I did take this video though of the vineyard. I'm using the new netbook we got and Verizon's 3G system to try and get the video published.

Prep and Cleaning

2010-09-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Mostly I'm trying out the new camera and netbook. So far just a minor drama or two. We arrived about 8:30 this morning at the winery and started getting ready for picking this weekend.

Below Stefania and Jeryy are cleaning our picking bins. They get muddy and dirty after sitting outside since last year.

I also have to get our tempermental Italian Press going. This morning it was about 45 minutes of fiddling with it. Jerry had to reset the breakers on the power and the final magic technique was a 'Fonzie Hit' on the control panel that got it working.

We've just stopped for lunch and are drying out a little. We still have about 20 picking bins to clean plus the press and crusher. We will also prep an inside tank for the Chardonnay tomorrow and turn on the chiller. The last steps will be to set up everything, crusher, press, tanks, so we can just start picking in the morning.

Here's our first little attempt at video. It's Jerry loading up the bins from the storage area and a little shot of the vineyard. Now that I know we can make it work I'll try for a few more exciting things this weekend.

New Phone, New Toys, Back in the Game

2010-09-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

We had a great time in Vegas. Unfortunately the frustration with our iPhones meant I didn't feel like taking the thing out and taking many pictures. The show Saturday night was a blast. I though Locksley was the best band of the night. We meet a ton of great people.

Next year we have to make it a party and have people join us. The set up had us inside a cabana on the beach. There was plenty of room for us to have guests in the cabana and just sit back, enjoy the wine and music and take advantage of the great space.

We spent all day Sunday by the pool, swimming and watching football on the tv. We had a nice dinner at Hank's inside the Green Valley Ranch resort.

We flew back Monday morning and then Tuesday we headed over to the Verizon store as soon as they opened. It took a little longer than I though it would but we both left with new Samsung Fascinates which so far have worked out well. It took us a little time to figure out how to get photos off the phone, but we did that today.

The best thing is I have a signal again in San Jose! For a few weeks now I've had nothing from AT&T. One day last week I dropped a call 11 times driving down highway 87. Voicemails were showing up 2-3 days after they had been sent. Verizon has had a good signal at both home and work. We'll try it out in the winery tomorrow.

The camera is also nicer on the Fascinate and includes a flash which means we'll have pictures from inside the winery this year as well as early morning harvest day pictures. Better yet there's video! We'll test that out tomorrow but expect us to have a few harvest related videos on the blog soon.

We also walked out of the store with an HP mini. Our hope is that this will allow us to connect in more spots during harvest and get up pictures, videos and blogs in 'real time'. We've set it up with 3G service and so far it's gotten a good signal in tough spots (like my office). We'll try that at the winery and out in the field this weekend.

Which brings us to the 'Back in the Game', part of the Blog today. Tomorrow we'll be in the winery prepping for our first picks of the season. We'll be cleaning picking bins, and prepping the crusher, tanks and fermentation bins. We'll stage the pump so everything is ready for Friday.

Friday morning we'll harvest three of the Haut Tubee vineyards; Home, the Church and the Ottigurr vineyards. We'll then head up to Chaine d'Or and harvest the Chardonnay there. We're not expecting much Chardonnay, most was damaged by sunburn in the August heat wave, but what is in good shape we'll bring in.

After the Chardonnay has gone through the crusher we'll process the Haut Tubee grapes. Then we'll clean everything up all over again and prep for Saturday. Our last task for Friday will be to drive down to Aptos and drop off picking bins for our Pinot Noir. I expect a 12-14 hour day.

Saturday morning we will be picking our Pinot Noir and getting it back to the winery for processing. We're expecting 2 tons. I think it will be a slow pick. The clusters are small and light with few on each plant. That will slow the picking crew down. If all goes well we'll try and take Sunday off (except for punch downs) and watch some football.

Watch the blog and see how we do with live updates.

Falling out of love with Apple and the iPhone

2010-09-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

We've written a lot about our iPhones and used them a great deal. I'm afraid that's all coming to an end though this month.

First there was a terrible experience with Apple, the Apple Store and Apple Support this month in an attempt to purchase an iPad.

I found the iPad totally and completely defective. It is NOT wireless compatible. Unlike other devices it only meets a limited number of wireless standards. I found this out after we purchased one and I was not able to get it to work on our home network. I also tried it at 7 other network points and was only able to get it to connect to 3 of the 7.

When I phoned support (after hours of self help), the friendly but totally unqualified support person's only suggestion was that I buy a new router. When I told him I would not do such a thing and that would not fix the problem with the other networks his response was. "Well I bought a new router and I love my iPhone." I replied that I could not buy a new router every where I need to use this device and he replied "That's to bad it's a really neat toy."

Neat toy.

Useless toy.

I returned it the next day. Apple wanted to know why I didn't like their service and gave them low marks on their survey's. Well no they really didn't give a snot. They called once. I returned the message and said I was traveling but they could call back when I returned. Some low level manager marked it off their tasks to do and I never heard back from anyone at Apple, the Apple Store or Apple Support about their lack of ability to give me a working device.

And then they charged me $50 for a restocking fee.

That's one lost customer for life. Enjoy the $50, I'll never spend another dollar with Apple as long as I live. I'm mean that way.

So that brought our ongoing problems with AT&T to a head. AT&T claims they cover 97% of America.

BS.

Among the place I don't get coverage:

The light rail station at 1st and Tasman. That's the main light rail terminal in San Jose.

The airport in San Jose. My signal drops every day when I drive by the airport. That's at 101 and 87 (Google Map it), or just about the busiest place in San Jose.

My office - which is near 1st and Tasman and 1/3 mile from the HQ of a little company called Cisco.

My living room or anywhere else in my house or backyard. We live at Blossom Hill and Snell in San Jose. Next time your in town ask someone where that is. It's one of the busiest intersections in town and 1 mile from the second biggest mall in town. Everyone will know.

Of course coverage is spotty in the vineyards and winery. We expect that, but we can't really run a business with a service that can't get coverage in the 9th largest city in America.

If you have suggestions for alternatives please send us a note. We are out shopping now for new phones and a new provider. Apple and AT&T might be 'Neat Toys', but we need a reliable business tool.

Vegas this Weekend.

2010-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

I put up a brief note earlier that we'd be pouring at an event in Las Vegas this weekend. We are all set to go and booked for the event. It will be Saturday evening at Mandalay Bay starting at 7PM.

Check Wine Amplified for ticket information and discounted hotels. The lead band will be Third Eye Blind and it should be a really great time. We'll be pouring our 2007 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and a special preview of our 2009 Chardonnay Santa Cruz Mountains.

Stef and I are arriving Saturday afternoon and staying through Monday. We will be at the Green Valley Ranch Resort. It's a bit out of town, but neither of us are big gamblers and the attraction of a great pool and a nice cabana pulled us there. We'd visited the hotel at our last Rock and Roll Wine event and really liked the set up and hotel.

We have a cabana reserved all day Sunday so if you happen to be in town please let us know!

Vineyard Check Ups

2010-09-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday we went out to check on the Crimson Clover Vineyard and the Chaine d'Or vineyard. At Chaine d'Or the red grapes are finally starting to turn colors. It's too late. They need at very least 45 days after they complete the change before harvest, and we've found 75 is really ideal to get the grapes properly ripe. Right now that will put the harvest date at December 15th. The plants will have shut down and lost all their leafs well before that date.

That means no Cabernet from Chaine d'Or this year. The Chardonnay is in a little better shape but still suffered a great deal of sun burn. It looks like we'll try to pick what we can around the 1st of October. There is probably only enough to make a single barrel. That will make wine making really hard as we won't be able to use any of the chillers in the tanks to get the wine to settle and keep it cool. There just won't be enough volume to reach up to the cooling jackets on the tanks.

Crimson Clover looked much better and we took a few pictures. In 2008 we harvested here on Sept 28th and in 2009 in was Sept 29th. This year it looks like we'll pick around October 20th, or almost 4 weeks later. The crop load looks good and the vineyard is clean. We did a little leaf pulling to help fight mildew and everything is coming along well.

The clusters are larger than they've been the last couple of years. Tasting the grapes we could tell they were not close to ready yet. The flavors are past the green stage (green bean and bell pepper) but just now in the red fruit stage. We will want to wait for plum, black cherry and berry flavors to show up. The tannins also are still very astringent and will need more time to soften.

We did pull samples off and Stefania ran BRIX tests on the juice. She used a refractometer and hydrometer and the readings from both were 20.2 We'd like to pick between 23.5 and 25, although we've usually picked this particular vineyard higher in the 26-27 range. You can see the juice is pink still and not showing ripe color.

All this means we have a lot more time to go. Stefania thinks it will be even later than the 20th. We'll start to taste test now pretty regularly and watch the weather closely. We definitely will not be picking in September this year though.

2008 Stefania Haut Tubee

2010-09-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Haut Tubee blend began on September 13th with the harvest of the Home vineyard and the Ottigurr vineyard in San Jose. The grapes were picked in the early morning and transferred to Chaine d’Or for processing. They were destemmed and crushed into a 60 gallon tub and fermentation was on native yeast. The initial picking included about 450 pounds of grapes with 70% Syrah, 14% Grenache, 13% Zinfandel and 3 % Mourvedre. About 10 pounds of mystery pink grapes (likely Pinot Gris) from the Chaine d’Or Estate were added whole cluster on 9/20.

On September 27th 250 pounds of Zinfandel and 50 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon from the ‘Roxie’ vineyard, a neighbor of the Crimson Clover Vineyard were crushed and started in their own tub.

The initial blend was pressed in a wooded basket press on 9/30 and transferred to tank to wait for the other lots to complete. The Roxie completed on 10/15 and was blended into tank with the first lot.

On October 24th 22 gallons of Elandrich vineyard was added to the tank and the entire blend transferred to a single new Sequin Moreau barrel. In May of 2009 the wine was racked into a used barrel as we felt it had achieved the level of new oak influence we were after.

On May 3rd 2010, the final blend was assembled. One barrel of 2008 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon was selected and blended in tank. In addition ½ barrel of new oak Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah was added as well.

Final breakdown at bottling:

Merlot 15%
Zinfandel 10%
Syrah 36%
Cabernet Sauvignon 37%
Grenache 2%
Mourvedre (trace)
Cabernet Franc (trace)
Petite Verdot (trace)
Pinot Gris (trace)

Final Alcohol 13.8% pH 3.72

Dark red the color of a ripe Bing cherry. Wow nose of cherries, plum, licorice and herbs. Very southern Rhone in the mouth with soft and ripe tannins. The wine seems to show Grenache even though that's a small part this year. Very ripe fruit and spice in the mouth with a long, fresh, juicy finish. Kind of a cross of the 06's juicy fruit and the 07's excellent structure.

Release Price: $60 per 3 pack, $120 per six pack

2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch

2010-09-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

Our 4 rows from the 1989 block of Syrah at Eaglepoint Ranch yielded 2.6 tons in 2006 and 3 .2 tons in 2007. In 2008 severe weather would limit the yield to just 600 pounds, or .3 tons. We pulled grapes from 15 other rows to harvest just less than 1 ton total. The grapes were picked early in the morning of October 1st and transported to Big Basin Vineyards for processing. We sorted the grapes and 100% destemmed but did not crush the berries.

Final Brix was low for the site at 25.5 and pH was 3.84. We added a small amount of tartaric acid to preserve the pH through Malolactic fermentation. Only native yeast was used in the fermentation and we again started Malolactic Fermentation in bin. The wine finished primary fermentation on 10/13 and was pressed and transferred to one new Sequin Moreau barrel and one old French Oak barrel. We did two additional rackings of this wine in 2008 to manage the tannins from the smaller than normal berries this year produced.

In early April the wine was transferred to Chaine d’Or for bottling. On May 3rd 50% of the new barrel was transferred to the Haut Tubee Blend. The remaining wine will have 33% new oak influence. As we sampled we felt that a 50/50 blend of new/old oak was too high for our tastes.

Final Alcohol 14.5% pH 3.71

Very dark and dense crimson color. Sweet floral nose with plums, berries and spice on the nose. More ripe plum, spice and pepper on the palate. With air the wine showed berry pie and pronounced black cherry flavors. The finish is lifted with a pepper note that carries the black cherry. This wine is as floral on the nose as past vintages with more cherry fruit. We've had no metallic notes in this wine and think the choice to wait until after the heavy rains around the 1st of October was key in removing any smoke residue from the vineyard..

Release Price: $99 per 3 pack, $180 per six pack

2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains

2010-09-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

In 2008 the 30 year old Pinot Noir vineyard we sourced these grapes from was under our management and we took efforts to reduce yields and improve sun exposure to the vineyard. The vineyard is a mix of 'heritage clones' including Swan and Mount Eden. Located just a few miles from the Pacific outside of Corralitos CA this is a very cool site. The vineyard produced a total of just over 5 tons of grapes on 4 ½ acres or about 1 ¼ ton per acre. The thirty year old vines produced tiny clusters and intense small berries.

We harvested just over one ton for ourselves on the morning of October 3rd. The grapes were transferred to Chaine d’ Or and 100% destemmed and crushed for fermentation in two t-bins. We used no whole clusters this year due to the very small cluster size and a desire to limit stem tannin.

Final numbers on the Pinot Noir were Brix 24.5 and pH of 3.39. We gently punched down the must 1-2 times daily and fermented on native yeasts. The fermentation was slow to start again this year, allowing some pre fermentation soak time. We added Malolactic starter on 10/13 while the wine was still in bin and pressed the wine on 10/21 after eighteen day fermentation. The wine was allowed to settle in tank for 3 days then transferred to 1 new Sequin Moreau barrel and one used French oak barrel.

No further rackings were done on the wine and it was allowed to age on its fine lees until racked for bottling after 17 months in barrel. We extend the barrel aging routine on all our 2008's in an effort to manage the large tannins that resulted from small berries and clusters.

Final Alcohol 13.5% pH 3.59

Ruby red color, darker than the 2007. Raspberry, strawberry, rose and spice on the nose. The nose is very exciting on this wine. Soft velvety tannins carry red fruit, ripe berries and a hint of forest to a long finish with blackberry showing as the wine opened in the glass. The wine has ripe and ample tannins promising long life in bottle.

Release Price: $135 per 3 pack, $250 per six pack

Bordentown - U.S.A

2010-09-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

I ended up with few pictures from our trip. Most were on my iPhone and came out pretty poorly. I know Stefania took better pictures and I hope she can post those up soon with some more trip details. We also had a few dozen sent to us from people at our party in Bordentown New Jersey.

I took this picture of Stefania in the 'Cool Cricket' in Bordentown. She had just won the Bud Light hat in their drawing at half time of the Sunday football games.

We both wanted to thank the great people of Bordentown again for their amazing hospitality. We had some stops at some pretty well known and high powered spots on our trips. We poured at a D.C. law firm overlooking the Potomac at Washington Harbor (That's one building down from the famous Watergate buildings) on Thursday. Monday we where hosted at Harry's Cafe and Steak House, just one block from the stock exchange on Wall Street in N.Y.C. We loved both of those stops.

Saturday though was in the tiny town of Bordentown, population 3,953. Our event there was set up by Mark and Pam of Jersey Foodies. Not only did they host a fantastic party for us with amazing food, but Mark came and picked us up personally at the train station and drove us to our hotel. We met so many wonderful people Saturday night and everyone was so gracious to Stef and I. Mark drove us back to the hotel again at 1:30 AM. The town doesn't have regular cab service, it's too small.

Saturday the folks in Bordentown were great to us, then on Sunday they one upped themselves. Saturday night I had mentioned to someone at the party that one of the things we don't like about traveling is not having good coffee in bed in the morning. Sunday morning there was a text message offering to bring us coffee at our hotel! We declined, it just seemed like too much, but we did accept Mark's offer of a ride to a local pub to watch the football games Sunday afternoon.

We hung out and ate chicken wings and drank beer for 6 hours. We never paid for a drink the entire time we were there. People we had met the night before insisted that they treat! When it was finally time for us to go back to the hotel a new friend we had met just the night before offered to take us back again to our hotel. Not only did he do that but he stopped us by his home for a visit. It is a 19th century building that he renovated. It used to be the Baptist Church in town, and he's restored it into an amazing living space. As if that wasn't enough he offered to pick us up the next morning and drive us to the train station in Trenton!

America is full of wonderful, amazing, gracious people, in big cities like Washington and New York and small towns like Bordentown. We hope to be back some day and visit again. In the mean time we continue to extend the invitation we gave to so many people in our travels. Come visit us in California. Let us throw a party for you at our winery and in our home!

Funny Quotes from the trip...

2010-09-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

I know I'm missing one, but that's what I get for not writing it down...

Here are the three I did capture:

#1 "I am not high strung, I am energetic and enthusiastic with organizational skills"

#2 "Cross and Skull Bones"

#3 "I'm entertaining myself and it's not even physical this time"

The first one was in reference to Paul saying I'm high strung and Liz correcting him. She and I are scary similar ;-) (that was at the backyard party in NJ)

The second one is me screwing up Skull and Crossbones (that being the theme on a garment I was wearing for Tbird as I was explaining it to his wife)

And last but not least, the third quote was overheard on the trip home on the flight from L.A. The gentleman in the seat behind us was "chatty".

Awesome.

Back to the Grind

2010-09-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

I am my own worst boss. If I worked for me I'd quit after a week, seriously.

We were barely through the door lastnight and I was already making a mental list of all the things to get done today or before the end of the day Thursday - many are related to basic housekeeping and home maintenance, but all are necessary tasks given the threat of rain for Sunday (bring in the outdoor furniture for one...)

Paul is already tasking me for Friday doing some running around at the vineyards to start taking samples and see how things look.

I too have photos from the East Coast Tour to post up and some commentary to add so please hang in there and be patient while I work through the rest of my list...

It's good to be back and to have something to do besides eating and drinking; yep, the list includes some dietary changes for the upcoming week ;-)

Chat soon...gotta run

Saturday Night's Line Up

2010-09-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Stef took a few pictures and Mark forwarded on a few more. We'll have those up later this week, but I did want to get up the wine list from Saturday. Mark took the count Sunday afternoon....

2005 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2006 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2006 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek
2006 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains
......2007 Stefania Haut Tubee
2007 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek x 2
2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountain x 2
2008 Stefania Haut Tubee
2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains x 2
2009 Stefania Chardonnay Chaine d'Or
2006 Sea Smoke Chardonnay Magnum
2005 Andrew Murray Syrah Oak Savanna Vineyard
2005 Lillian Winery Syrah
2006 Sine Qua Non Syrah Raven Series
2006 Rivers-Marie Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Rivers-Marie Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Tobin James Lagrein Silver Reserve
2004 Vigna Vecchia Chianti Classico
2005 Duca di Saragnano Chianti Riserva
2007 Domaine de la Buissonne Côtes du Rhône Villages Beaumes-de-Venise
2007 Donna Laura Ali Toscana IGT
2007 Thompson Street Pinot Noir "Posse"
2006 Pure Love Wines Shiraz Layer Cake
2007 Tobin James Primitivo James Gang Reserve
2006 Stags' Leap Winery Petite Sirah
2006 Kongsgaard Chardonnay
2006 Parallel Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
2007 Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon
N.V. Alvear Pedro Ximénez Montilla-Moriles Solera 1927
N.V. LaMarca Prosecco
2007 DuMOL Chardonnay Isobel
2006 Latium Morini Valpolicella Superiore Prognai
2006 Rusina Syrah Monte Rosso
2007 Zind-Humbrecht Riesling
2005 Laetitia Late Harvest Riesling - Arroyo Grande Valley - Block Z
2008 Lafond Pinot Noir Lafond Vineyard
2008 Tolosa Winery Viognier Edna Ranch
2009 Santa Marina Provincia di Pavia IGT White Table Pinot Grigio Magnum
2006 Sanford Pinot Noir
2007 Chappellet Napa Valley Chardonnay

Tourist Day

2010-09-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

I just couldn't seem to pull out the camera today. I did take a couple of pictures inside the Capitol Building today. I've been to DC maybe 20 times now and this was my first trip inside.

We've been getting around on the Metro and have spent a lot of time in old town Alexandria.

Last night we had two really fantastic events. One friend set up a tasting for us at his law firm and it was the perfect setting for us to share our wines. I'd really recommend a visit to the Washington Harbor if you're on tour. It was an amazing setting looking out on Roosevelt Island.

After that we met up with old friends at Dino's. I'd also highly recommend this as a dinner night out. It's a kind of place I think we just don't have enough of and I hope we will see a trend towards more places like it. The food was rustic Italian. All very well prepared from fantastic ingredients and at an affordable price. Service was fantastic and there was a deep wine list.

I complain a lot at home that I can get better food, better service and better wine at home than most restaurants and the one's that can out do us at home want $200. Everywhere needs more places like Dino's.

Tonight we're off to downtown DC for a 'dress up' dinner!

Quick Update

2010-09-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

We arrived safely in D.C. Had a great tasting and then dinner last night. We'll try and answer emails from both those events later this afternoon or tomorrow when we arrive in Trenton. We're off to visit the Capitol at 11 AM this morning, then the National Art Galleries I think.

We're slow on email right now, but both Stef and I will answer all of them soon.

Cheers!

Allocation Details

2010-09-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

Our Fall release letters are going out on and about the 15th this month. We have all the details worked out on allocations. It's going to be tight I think. I'm pretty sure we will run out of wine pretty quickly. We broke the list up into 3 groups. The 'A' group is made up of people who have purchased before. For that group there are 4 different breakdowns on allocation amounts.

Everyone in the 'A' group did get at least a 3 pack allocation of all three wines. The people at the top tier were allocated 6 Syrah, 6 Haut Tubee and 12 Pinot Noir. There were just about 30 of those people. To tell you how tight we are, there are just 32 cases of Syrah left right now. What I'm figuring is that not everyone will take their full amount.

The 'B' group is made up of people who have signed up for our list since the last release. There are just over 130 of those people. They are going to get the option to purchase a combo 3 pack made up of one of each wine. There's also a slot for them to request additional wine if any makes it through the 'A' group.

The 'C' group is made up of people who signed up before last spring but have not purchased wine. That group is going to be given the chance to purchase the three 2007 wines we still have available (Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet, Uvas Creek Cabernet and Eagplepoint Syrah). There won't be enough 2008 to offer them any of that.

It's a little unusual to put newer sign ups in front of older sign ups but I thought it was important to give people a chance to try our wines and the 3 pack cost will be just $98. They will also have the option to purchase the 2007 wines we still have.

Over the next few days I'm going to be putting up notes on the three new wines. I tried to keep the letters brief so their are just basic tasting notes. I asked people to check the blog for more details on the wine so they will be up here shortly.

Guess That Pitcher -Free Wine

2010-09-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

I took this picture last night before dinner at a friends. I just thought it was funny. Stefania and our friend Holly hamming it up for the camera over a pitcher of........

So email me your best guess of what's in the pitcher. First correct answer gets a bottle of Holly's favorite wine - our 2008 Haut Tubee. And no Holly, you can't guess.

Labor Day Weekend

2010-09-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

I know we still have one more day to go but we've already had a great Labor Day Weekend. For many winemakers around the state it's the start of their harvest, but we still have many weeks ahead before we start. It's a great weekend to spend with friends.

Saturday we had a long 3+ hour lunch at a Brazilian steak house in San Mateo. We had two 750 ml bottles and a magnum with lunch. Everyone started in the bar though with a cocktail. There was a strict limit of one Pisco Sour per person. Two creates dementia :)

We were celebrating a baby shower for our friends and with this group BBQ meat and wine is the best type of baby shower. Below beef ribs come out to the table. After lunch many of us went into a 'meat coma'. The talk the next day was if anyone actually ate again the rest of the day ( 1 1/2 out of 11 of us did!)

Sunday it was time to regather and get the smoker going. I smoked a salmon for Stefania and then when the smoker had cooled to about 180 I put these ribs on. Our friend Gerard had done steaks like that for us on our trip to Nashville. I left the steaks on for just about 70 minutes. They don't really cook at all, they just pick up the spice of the smoke.

Then I transfer them to a hot grill and finish them off there.

I did fall asleep on the coach but we had another great night of food and wine with friends.

One more event tonight with smoked ribs, brats and more wine!

What Makes a Vintage Great?

2010-09-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not so much concerned with what happens in the vineyard or in the winery in this blog. What I mean is what does it mean when you here someone say a vintage is great? What does it mean when the wine critics call a vintage great?

On almost every front the 2007 vintage in California has been called a great vintage. I think that's right, especially in the context of what people usually mean when they say that.

2007 was an easy year. That made it a great year. The weather, the seasons, everything you need to go right in a year went right. That meant it wasn't particularly hard to bring in great grapes and because the grapes were so good it wasn't hard to make good wine. The praise that often gets used is, "A rising tide raises all boats".

That's exactly what a great vintage does. Everyone succeeds and everyone makes wine above their normal level. It means the great sites and winemakers will make exceptional wine. It also means wines and sites that may usually be average will perform much better. For a consumer it means you can go out and buy just about anything from that year and it will be good.

Those type of years are really a boom for most wine drinkers because every choice they make will be a good one. For serious collectors it can actually be a bit of a draw back. That rising tide also means rising demand and that can mean rising prices. That happens in Bordeaux every time they have a good vintage and often people who would like to buy the wine get priced out of the market.

2008 was a totally different year. It was hard from start to finish. There were issues with almost everything you could image (except mildew) and extra work was required all year long in the vineyard and then again in the winery. On top of that yields were painfully low, often off up to 75% from 2007 at some sites.

So that makes it a bad vintage right?

I actually think 2008 is a better vintage than 2007. But there's a huge qualifier on that. It's not a vintage where all boats rose equally. It was the exact opposite in fact. Those growers and wineries that did the extra work, took the extra care and had the extra focus made fantastic wines. I've heard from many, many winemakers that they think the 2008 wines are the best or some of the best wines they have ever made.

If a winery couldn't, wouldn't or didn't understand how to deal with the year, they struggled to make decent wines. A lot of people picked way too early and made lean tannic wines. Some didn't modify their winemaking enough to deal with the small berries and high solid to liquid ratios at crush and made hard over extracted wines. Many struggled with the low yields and had difficulty handling the smaller lots from individual vineyards. You'll see a lot of wine in 2008 that is going to be AVA labeled instead of vineyard labeled because producers didn't have a plan to deal with the very small quantities they were forced to deal with and had to blend together lots.

Because of those yield issues there was very little quality juice available on the secondary market. Don't expect to see great second label wines in 2008 or great wines from those wineries that buy in juice rather than process grapes. It's going to be a bad year for the bulk blenders as well. 2008 will not be a year you can go to the supermarket and pick out any bottle.

That's why 2008 is never going to be called 'great' by the press or critics. It wasn't great for everyone. I think all the vintage charts you will ever see will rank it below 2007 and 2009. For the fine producers though that's just not true. I think every wine we made in 2008 was better than the same wine we made in 2007. If you think I'm just hyping the vintage I have to sell, I'll tell you I have almost as much 2007 left as I have 2008 still to sell. I also have much more 2009 in barrel still but I think 2008 is better than 2009.

I've heard that same thing from other quality producers I've talked to and in other wines I've tried. My advice is to skip the closeouts, bargains and blenders in 2008 and concentrate on those producers you know make great wine. Their wine is going to be very special.

Upcoming Travel and Events

2010-09-03T19:35:00.000-07:00

Next week Stefania and I will hit the road to preview our 2008 wines for friends and customers on the East Coast. We have four events planned starting Thursday the 9th and wrapping up on Monday the 13th.

Thursday the 9th from 5-7 PM we will be pouring 6 different wines at a private location in Georgetown, DC. I'm planning on opening our 2007 Santa Cruz Mountains and Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons, 2007 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah, 2008 Pinot Noir, 2008 Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch and 2008 Haut Tubee.

Thursday at 8PM we will be attending an off line wine dinner with members from the Wine Spectator on-line forum just north of DC at Dino's. The restaurant is located right on the Red Line of the DC Metro.

Saturday evening the 11th we will be at a private party in New Jersey about 30 minutes from Philadelphia. We will be bringing along a selection of 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 wines.

Monday the 13th we will be at another off line dinner of Wine Spectator forum members in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street. We'll be bringing our 2008 wines to that event for people to try.

If you would like to attend any one of these events please contact me directly via email for directions and a formal invite. We're hoping to get to meet as many of our mailing list members as we can on this trip. Each event is very informal and we hope we'll get the chance to talk with everyone interested in our wines.

The Company Retreat

2010-09-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

Back in July I wrote about updating our business plan. Well I did finish the update and we have just a few financial reports to add once they've been checked off by our CPA. It looks like it will close out at just about 60 pages.

One thing we knew we needed to do was sit down together with all the shareholders (that's me and Stefania) and review the plan. We wanted to make sure we were in agreement on everything in the plan and that most important we both understood where we're going and what we're going to do in the years ahead.

I suppose we could have just set aside some time on a Sunday afternoon and sat down in the backyard. Everyone knows though how easy it is to get distracted with chores and tasks around the house so we planned on a get away. We couldn't go too far and really just had a couple days to spare so we spent Sunday and Monday in Monterey.

I've always really enjoyed Monterey and it was nice to spend a couple great days there. The weather was cool but sunny. We did spend Sunday afternoon on the balcony of our hotel room going over the business plan page by page. We even managed to do that without a glass of wine or a cocktail. At least until after we were done.

There was enough time left though to take a few long walks. We also ate on the wharf a couple of times and had a great time at the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

We don't really treat ourselves to very many perks as business owners. In the past 5 years the fanciest thing I think we've bought as a business expense is a new computer for me. My old one was a circa 1999 Mac, so it was clearly time for a new one. We decided this retreat was a good idea though and we're likely to make the business plan review an annual get away event.

Bleh, August Temps

2010-08-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

What a sucky Summer. I shouldn't complain about the weather, but I am. It's 8:30 on Friday night, August 27th and it feels like mid Fall. The cold breeze from the fog rolling makes it too cold to be hanging out in shorts on the back patio. Feels like it's 65 degrees, or cooler right now, and I'm bundled up on the couch watching the Giants game.

The problem with the cooler than normal temps goes beyond my crankies. It's affecting the vines and the grapes. And that makes me even crankier.

The vines at home are doing "ok", but we have leaves starting to turn already...on my way home from the winery today, a young vineyard down the hill from us already has yellowing leaves in the fruit zone. It's too soon!

Three days before bottling, Paul and I were at Chaine d'Or, it was 1:01pm, 68 degrees outside, and the fog was lingering over the hills on the next ridge over from the vineyard. Argh! It's been wet, damp, cool, foggy, and bleak.

Yesterday, an old Italian neighbor dude knocked on my door asking if Paul was home. In his grocery store bag he pulled out a cluster of white grapes from his backyard that had grey rot on it. I sighed. He said he's never had his grapes look this bad in all the years he's been tending them.

The best I could tell him was to cut out the damaged sections and we'd come by this weekend to take a look (and bring our Stylet Oil though I think it's too late for another spray application).

The Church vineyard around the corner is doing pretty ok. I need to drop about 6 clusters of mildew damaged fruit, but it looks like we'll have ~200 pounds of grapes to add to the Haut Tubee blend.

Our Blogging Break

2010-08-26T18:22:00.000-07:00

Usually at this time of year we'd be busy with a lot of blogs going up. We had a bottling run last Sunday, bird netting is going on in the vineyards, we have a trip with some public events coming up, and a release going out.

Two Saturdays ago we lost a family member after a short and very serious illness. Stefania and I have been grateful for all the support we've gotten. It's reaffirmed our belief that making wine and making friends is the right path for us to be on. That has kept us away from blog updates as we've focused on family and taking care of the day to day business.

We still did need to complete a bottling run on Sunday. We bottled our 2008 Cabernet Sauvignons. I feel that these are the best wines we've ever made. Each one was unique and excellent. I'm sure we'll have more on them in the months ahead.

We worked with a larger than normal volunteer crew as our friends; Kathy, Millie, Noelle, Holly, Amber and Rachel helped out. (Yep all girl volunteer crew!). Our regular helper Jerry was there as well and Stefania and I. Below we're getting ready to start. Millie is on the left, Matt from the bottling company is prepping the truck and Jerry is waiting to get started.

Stefania has become the master of bottling logistics. Just 11 extra cases!

I was much better with the forklift and got everything loaded up pretty easy.

We'll be back with more updates and thank you again to everyone who has given their support over the past few weeks.

Crimson Clover Visit

2010-08-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Stefania and I were able to squeeze in a visit to the Crimson Clover vineyard recently. All of our vineyards are at least 2-3 weeks behind their regular schedule including this one. Last year we had this vineyard netted by August 1st. This year netting took place on the 14th and the vineyard hasn't completed veraison yet.

Harvest in 2008 was on September 28th and in 2009 in was on September 26th. This year my estimate is that harvest will be sometime after October 20th. This is an early site for us, usually a full month before our other Cabernet vineyard sources are ready. That's not promising for those sites. If the schedule stays consistent to past years that would put us into late November for picking.

That would just be too late. The plants will have shut down by then and the winter rains started. We're making alternative plans now to make a Rose out of any fruit that won't make it to pull red ripeness.

The Crimson Clover vineyard should make it fine though. It's in a warmer micro climate and a late October picking date is pretty safe for us. In the picture below you can see the vineyard is in good shape and healthy.

We've started to see some unusual bird activity lately. There have been a few emaciated dead birds in the vineyards. We've also seen birds eating unripe green grapes. Sunday I saw a mother mocking bird feeding a youngster who was screeching in distress. I think the late season is taking a toll on the birds. Their regular food supplies are not getting ripe when they should and it looks like some birds are starving.

I have not seen that story hit the news yet so just count that as an observation and a guess. It could cause us problems later if the birds get more aggressive in attacking the netting. It could also mean we get migratory birds stopping in the vineyard that would normally just pass by.

Sip - Savor - Support

2010-08-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

We will be pouring again to support the Alzheimer's Association for Northern California & Nevada.

http://www.sipsavorsupport.com/Home_Page.html

The date is Saturday September 18th from 11:30- 3PM. Tickets are $50 and last year the event raise more than $21,000 for the Alzheimer's Association for Northern California & Nevada.

I suspect we will be pouring our 2009 Chardonnay as a preview of its release in the Spring and one red wine. This is a charity we are very happy to support and hope we see you there.

The Haut Tubee Has a Plan (Final)

2010-08-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

By the time we had bottled the 2007 in the spring of 2009 we knew we needed to plan for a Haut Tubee release in a much more formal way than we had in the past. 2007 had worked out well but we knew that a good part of the production was from the higher yields that year and a good part of the rest was from barrel experiments that we knew we would not do every year.

Our experience though with the blending the 2007 wine, which we had largely done in the summer of 2008, helped a plan come together. With the Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah we had picked two barrels of wine that we though were least like the other seven and eliminated them from the final blend. I felt that really made the final Syrah much stronger.

We had also done a similar thing with the 2007 Chaine d'Or Cabernet Sauvignon. In the summer of 2008 we pulled samples from all eight barrels we had. We went through the same process as we had done with the Syrah. We selected the barrels that were least like the others. It's important to note, we're not looking for the 'least' barrels, or the 'worst' barrels, we're looking for the barrels that are most different from the others.

We then rank them, in this case from one to eight. Next we start blending trials. It might be the one we ranked least typical adds something really unique or good when combined with other barrels. As we do this the samples start to stand out. Certain barrels bring less to the final blend than others. They may be really good barrels, and usually are, but they don't contribute as much to the final blend as others.

On that 2007 wine we selected two barrels that we then divided up between the Haut Tubee and the Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon. We did that division also based on what would bring the most to each finished wine.

In the end we thought the process made every wine better. For the single vineyard wines it really let us focus on bringing out what is unique in each vineyard. For the Santa Cruz Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon it let us bring together a wine with everything complete. Finally for the Haut Tubee it let us create a really great hand made wine and price it low enough that it's a great bargain.

That last part turned out to be good for our customers in a number of ways. For new customers who hadn't tried our wines it gave them a wine they could evaluate without putting out a lot of cash. With 3 bottles at $60 the price to try the wine was 1/3 of what a single new bottle of Napa Cab would cost. For existing customers it gave them a wine they could enjoy our wines while the longer aging wines of ours rested in their cellars. Off course the best part was getting a really good wine for $20.

Based on all that we decided to make the Haut Tubee part of our regular planning. Now we plan on making those one or two barrels from our small vineyards. We also now plan on evaluating each single vineyard wine in barrel and selecting candidates to declassify into the Haut Tubee. We may decided they are all ok to stay, or we may move one or more to the Haut Tubee.

We think that in 2008 and again in 2009 it made all of our wines better to take this approach. We've built it into our planning for 2010 and we're even talking now about having a Haut Tubee Rose and a Haut Tubee White wine. So the Haut Tubee is here to stay and we're very happy with how things have turned out.

The new replanted Haut Tubee in the Winter of 2008 before replanting with Mourvedre.

The Haut Tube Goes Mainstream (Part 4)

2010-08-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

We exited harvest in 2007 with basically the same plan for the Haut Tubee we had in 2006. It was a single barrel of wine and we were not entirely sure what we would do with it. We had made that single barrel the same way we had done the 2006 and the way we continue to handle the small lots that come into the winery.

Each lot comes from a tiny vineyard with high quality fruit. We process the fruit as we would any of our larger lots, except it goes in a small fermentation bin and gets extra argon to protect it as fermentation slows. Each lot is pressed in the small wooden basket press and transferred to a stainless steel tank. When the tank has enough wine to fill a barrel, the wine is transferred to barrel.

By the summer of 2008 we knew we had a problem. Word had gotten out on the 2006 and we were expecting high demand for the 2007. The problem was we had just a single barrel or about 25 cases. There was no way 25 cases would meet demand.

It turned out we had a lot of things we didn't know what to do with from the 2007 vintage. We had ended up with 3/4 of a barrel extra of Harvest Moon Cabernet. We also had a 1/2 barrel of Elandrich Vineyard Merlot/Cab. There was a single barrel of press wine from Chaine d'Or that we didn't want to use in the final blend of the Estate wine. We also were conducting barrel experiments on our Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah. We had decided to use three new barrels out of the nine. We were trying a Sequin Moreau Burgundy Barrel, a Sequin Moreau Bordeaux Barrel and an Ermitage Syrah Barrel. We wanted to see what one matched the wine best. If any of them didn't work out, we had still another barrel without a home.

Some point in that summer of 2008 a plan came together for all the extras. The press wine was broken up. Some went in to beef up the SCM Cab blend, a tiny bit went back into the estate wine, and some went in to the Haut Tubee. We then decided to blend together the Elandrich and Harvest Moon. This solved the problem of the 3/4 barrel, and the remaining amount went into the Haut Tubee.

Later we would add some of the Chaine d'Or into the SCM Cab and a little of that would also end up in the Haut Tubee. We now had two barrels of Haut Tubee instead of one. We were ready to go forward with that and make 50 cases of wine.

Then it came time to taste through the Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah. We had made that wine at Big Basin Vineyards and we had the assistant winemaker there pull us a sample from each barrel. Stefania and I tasted them blind. One really stood out. It was smokey and rich with pepper and dark fruit notes, almost brooding. It was a great Syrah, but it was totally different from all the other samples. It turned out that was the new Ermitage barrel.

The folks at Big Basin recommended we bottle that barrel separately but I really didn't want to create a one time only wine. We decided to put it in the Haut Tubee instead. I think you could have argued that that barrel was the best of all nine, but it was also the most different. We also choose another barrel that stood out and that joined the Haut Tubee as well.

That was what we ended up with for 2007. Four barrels of really great wine, blended together and including about 35% new oak for $20. It really is a bargain, but the way we're keeping the books on the wines, most of our costs are falling under other wines. We released that wine in 2009 and it took off again. The highlight was a Gold Medal at the Chronicle Wine Competition.

The 2007 Haut Tubee barrels after bottling.

Next Up - The Haut Tubee Gets a Plan

The Haut Tubee Gets a Name (Part 3)

2010-08-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

"Is this crap any good?"

Wine writer David Tong always says that's his favorite wine quote of all time. I don't remember on what visit, or for what wine it was that Stefania asked him that, but I do remember her saying it.

We really didn't know what to think of those two barrels. We liked them, they seemed good, and we did start to share sample with people to get their opinions. Everyone was in agreement; "This crap isn't bad."

It suddenly occurred to us that we were not going to have to throw it out and that meant we had to figure out what to do with it. If we were going to bottle it, we'd have to come up with a name and some labels. It also meant we'd be sinking some money into the wine. We'd need to buy bottles, corks, labels and pay for the bottling. That meant we should probably think about selling it which means coming up with a price and marketing plan.

We knew if we were going to market the wine 'crap' was probably not a good name. One night we called a business meeting. That means Stefania and I got in the hot tub and that we were drinking cocktails. We kicked around about 5-10 different ideas, then I don't remember who, it was probably Stef though she has all the great ideas, said: "Let's call it Hot Tub". There was more smarting off about pretension and foofoo in the wine world and I remember thinking we should give it a name that sounds French as a way of making fun of that foofoo.

Two of Stefania's very favorite wines are Haut Brion and La Mission Haut Brion. Haut mean 'above' in French and does sound a little like hot. I was on to something. The vines in the back yard are 'above' our hot tub so it kind of fit. Haut Tub, that was the first beta name. I thought for a minute though on how to play with the Tub word. Tub in French it turns out is Tub, I didn't know that then, but came up with what I thought was a funny play on Tub: Tubee.

That was it. We decided. Haut Tubee it was. We'd make the label as fun and unpretentious as we could. The romance on the back would let people know it was named after our hot tub and we'd just put 'California' on the label as the AVA, even though we could have put Santa Clara Valley, or San Francisco Bay on the label. We really wanted to make it fun.

We decided that we'd price it as low as possible to fit in with that fun image. Since the production costs and grape costs had already been factored in on other wines the only costs directly tied to the wine were barrels and bottling. We though $20 was a good number and went with that.

In the Spring of 2008 we released the wine. In keeping with the theme, I really downplayed it in the release letter. I almost made it sound like leftovers. I really wanted to go 180 degrees from the fluffy letters and prose that announced so many new wines being released. I remember that the recommendation was to: "Drink it this summer with pizza in your hot tub."

We had just 37 cases of that 2006. We sold about 25 of them from the release letter. Soon my email started to fill up with requests and comments: "Do you have more?", "Can I get a case?", "Wow, this is really good!" The other 12 cases were gone in about a month, word was starting to get out.

Mostly people were very surprised. We had made it sound like the wine was no big deal and at $20 people were not expecting a lot. Then they started to open them and found a rich, flavorful, deep wine with lots of complex flavors going on. That 2006 really had a great taste of a southern Rhone red. We knew it was a good wine, and that at $20 it was a great price.

Now it seemed like we were stuck with this happy accident. Demand and praise was so high, we had to plan on a 2007 version.

Cleaning up after a pick of the Haut Tubee Vineyard

Next Up - The Haut Tubee Gets All Serious and Stuff (part 4)

The Haut Tubee Finds a Home (Part 2)

2010-08-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

Just two months after throwing out the 2005 Haut Tubee (It still didn't have a name, that came later) I spent a long day working the Chardonnay harvest at Chaine d'Or. At the end of the day I sat with Jerry Anderson on the stone wall at Chaine d'Or and chatted about our 2006 winemaking plans.

We had moved out of the facility we used in 2005 and were on to a new place in 2006. It was closer for us and we'd be one of only four wineries using the equipment. Jerry knew the winemaker and operation there and offered some advice on how to deal with the quirks we'd find over time. I told him we were excited though and planned on making three wines and crushing about six tons total.

I told him our only disappointment was that this place also had a one ton minimum and we would not be able to process the grapes from our small vineyards. He asked about the small vineyards, and how much wine it was. I told him we were expecting to make a single barrel, maybe up to a barrel and a half.

He said; "Why don't you make it here. I have an old half barrel you can try to bring back to life and there's some space in the corner."

We'd found a home for the Haut Tubee! The 1/2 barrel was old, it had 1992 written on the bands. With lots of hot water though it swelled back up and was sound enough to work. We had another old barrel we'd lined up and looked ready to go. We processed all the grapes as we had done the year before. Each lot was fermented on its own and pressed with the little wooden basket press. Then the juice was blended together with the other lots in the stainless steel tanks.

We had an extra addition in 2006. We pulled aside about 300 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Uvas Creek Vineyard for our annual grape stomp and harvest party. On a cool Saturday night our friends stomped the grapes into must. The next Sunday morning a few friends came over and we picked out all the stems, then ran a bucket brigade from the bin we had used for the stomp into a fermentation bin. The 'Stomp Wine' would be added to the final blend.

In what would become the standard for the Haut Tubee, as soon as the stainless steel tank reached capacity, we transferred the wine to barrel. In the end we had one full barrel and one half barrel of wine. We tucked it into a little corner in the cellar at Chaine d' Or and learned to use the equipment there for racking and sulfuring the wine. There it would stay cool through the summer of 2007.

In August of 2007 we would take over operations at Chaine d'Or and move the other 14 barrels we had made in 2006 from the facility we were in to the cellar at Chaine d'Or. We now had all our wine together. We kept tasting the Haut Tubee, and we didn't know what to think. Our expectation were pretty low but the wine tasted really good. I think we kept waiting for it to suck, but month after month it held its own against the other wines we had in barrel.

Through the busy harvest of 2007 we didn't give those two barrels much thought. We kept them topped up and safe and worried about all the other things we had to get done. It wouldn't be until the Spring of 2008 that we'd start thinking about those barrels again.

Early Haut Tubee experiments in our home kitchen:

-Next up , Part 3, "Is This Crap any Good?"

History of the Haut Tubee (Part 1)

2010-08-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

Of all the wines we make the Haut Tubee generates the most email, most retail orders, most re-orders and most information requests of any wine by at least 3 to 1. I think it would be fair to call it our most popular wine. Most people I talk with are surprised that it's so good. We down play it in our release letters and the price ($20) is so low that most people have lowered expectations.

I thought it might be a good idea to run through how we came about making the Haut Tubee. To go through the process we use now to make it, how the final blend comes together and why we price it so low.

When we first planted vines around our house, we didn't have a name for the vineyard. It was our yard after all so mostly we called it; "the vineyard at home". We knew though that that was misleading if we didn't qualify it. Our home is small and the yard even smaller, we always had to add; "it's just 50 plants."

The first few years as the vineyard matured we had a small quantity of grapes, not really enough to make any real wine with. We played around with the grapes, but the results always ended up being dumped out. By 2005 we knew that would change. We had added a couple of other small vineyards by that time and combined with our home vineyard we knew we'd have a large enough quantity to properly store and age the juice.

Our problem was that the facility we were making wine in had a one ton minimum to process grapes. We thought we might be close to a ton, but we also knew that all the grapes would not be ready at the same time.

That year we decided we'd just make the wine at home again. We bought some improved equipment that year to help out. We purchased two 200 liter stainless steal tanks for aging, a 35 gallon wine press and a couple of 60 gallon fermentation tubs. All classic top end home winemaker equipment. Since we were making the wine at home, our plan was we'd just bottle it for ourselves. It couldn't be something we sold because it was not made in a bonded facility.

The grapes all came from small vineyards that we took great care of so everything was really high quality. I rented a crusher de-stemmer and we processed each lot individually just like we were doing for the commercial wine, only on a smaller scale. That year I kept the small lots separate as we fermented and then after pressing the finished juice I added them together into a stainless steal tank.

I bought Argon to help protect the wine and the tank we used had an adjustable top so the wine was protected as it would be in a commercial winery. That first year, 2005 the wine turned out really good. Through the Spring of 2006 Stefania and I both actually thought it was excellent.

Then Summer came. We had a heat spell that got the garage up over 100 degrees for almost two weeks in a row. We had no way to cool the tanks and no additional insulation in the garage. The wine was cooked. We ended up dumping it all out after the heat wave. It was a great disappointment because it had been doing so well.

We talked a lot about what we could do different in 2006. After kicking it around for awhile we decided that the answer was nothing. We didn't really want to invest the money in insulating the garage. That was money better spent on the commercial wine. Everything else we had purchased to make the small lot we could use in the future on our commercial wine, but redoing the garage, we could not reuse or justify.

We planned on making it again in 2006, we just knew that it would probably be ruined again the next Summer. Still we though it was worthwhile to try. It gave us good experience in making wine, and we were after all the experience we could get. We just didn't want to throw more money at it. That's a big part of where our low expectations on the wine came from. The first year we planned on making it we planned on keeping it for ourselves. The second year we planned on throwing it out. It was never something we thought would be a big thing for us.

Next up- The 2006 finds a home.