A Pruning Primer.

Giving a primer after pruning is done may seem weird but it really is better to see finished vines. I hope this will explain some of the terms we've been blogging about over the past month.



This is a young vine after pruning. This particular vine is two years old. At this point you want to leave two buds on a spur with the idea of growing two canes for the new year. In California we are usually able to get to this stage after one year, but this particular vine is in the shade on our front porch.





Here's a good close up of all the parts. The lighter wood is last years growth, the darker wood is older growth. Last years growth was called a 'cane' after it grew to full length. Right now as you see it pruned, with two 'buds', it's a 'spur'. The rings around the new growth and the small dark bit sticking out are the 'buds'. They will grow this year into new 'canes' and will be the part of the plant that produces fruit.



These are the 'head' trained vines in front of our house. Head training is when there are multiple 'arms' coming from one 'trunk' and each arm contains 'spurs' with 'buds'. On these plants we've left one spur and two buds per arm. Most head trained vines have many more buds left, but we train these up a single poll and tie the new canes upright, so we leave fewer buds. Usually in California the canes are left to flop and that creates a 'bush' like look. So those are often also called 'bush' trained. In the northern Rhone valley the vines are tied up a single stake, and that's how we do it.

This is the last of the original Haut Tubee vineyard in the front yard. Each vine ready for new canes to grow, and you can see the single post they will be tied to.

In the backyard we are converting the head trained plants to a V.S.P system. That means Vertical Shoot Positioning. We are retraining the vines into a 'cordon and spur' system. Below you see the first step. We encouraged a new shoot from an old vine and have pruned it back to two buds. These buds will produce a cane each that will be tied to a wire, called the 'fruiting wire'. After one more year the wood will be older and that will become the 'cordon'.

Here's what it will look like after one year. This vine has two 'canes' pulled down and tied to a wire. The buds will send up shoots this year, and next year those shoots will be pruned back to 'spurs'.

At this point this training method is actually called 'Guyot Simple'. Named after the 19th century Frenchman who invented it. The cane is pulled down and will send fruit producing shoots. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are often trained this way. One spur is left on the vine and next year the cane that spur produces will be pulled down and tied up this same way after the old cane is cut off.

We won't do that here. We want the canes to become cordons and produce spurs. This picture gives an idea of the 'vertical' in V.S.P. We have nicked out the buds that face downward (That's where the phrase 'nick it in the bud' comes from.) This will only leave shoots going up, or 'vertical', and into the supporting wires.

This picture is at the Church Vineyard. Here you can see the start of 'spurs' on a three year old plant.

And the final picture of the new Haut Tubee vineyard. There will be 25 Cordon and Spur trained Mourvedre vines in a 5-wire V.S.P. system. Now you know what all that means.

The Lifestyle

I've been mulling this over for a couple of days now. Our friend Wes loaned me a copy of "From Ground to Glass", a winemaking video with great scenes and fantastic interviews with winemakers. One of the common themes that kept coming up was "The Lifestyle" and how many people felt blessed to be able to live it. I was trying hard to figure out what that really means. How does that translate exactly?

One thing I stopped saying last year was "Good Food, Good Friends and Good Wine" because I kept seeing it everywhere I went. It was in print in a food and wine magazine, on the wall at Trader Joes, and on at least two other winery websites. But as tomorrow approaches and Paul and I get ready to celebrate St. Vincents Day with friends, it really comes down to that.

We're going to smoke some pork (with used barrel staves), there will be homemade bread (I'm leaning toward rosemary rolls), and other treats that our friends are bringing.

The best part will be having a house full of friends, the food will nurture our bodies, and the wine will complement it all.

The lifestyle is a combination of many things, it's not any one thing or moment in time. It's pruning in January and observing the vineyard at the beginning of the season, it's watching the buds break, the flowers bloom, and the fruit set. It's having parties and breaking bread. It's sharing our craft at lifes celebrations, cheering each other on through good times and bad, having a tangible good to share with others. It's very personal. It's time spent in the winery or the lab, it's time spent washing barrels, tanks, hoses, and pumps. It's being hands on. It's cuts, bruises, and scrapes. It's friends showing up to help in any capacity or situation. It's the support and encouragement from friends, family, others in the industry, everyone we meet. It's being up at sunrise and harvesting then processing until after dark. It's late night pizza parties when we're still dirty and unwashed and totally exhausted.

It ends up sounding corny, but I do feel blessed to have this opportunity to connect with so many people on so many different levels. It's great to feel a belonging to a community, to my local community, and one on a much larger scale.

The economy may suck right now but we'll always have food, wine, and friends to share it with.

And that, in a nutshell, is The Lifestyle....

Paganalia Again

Last year I did a short post about St Vincent's Day, which grew out of the Roman holiday of Paganalia. It's that time of year again. Today is Paganalia.



This year the natural cycle seems to be working better for us. The first full moon of the year came on January 10th this year, giving us 11 days to prune, vs the one day we had last year. We didn't get it done in a day last year of course, and the vines seemed out of cycle all year.



The weather also cooperated. We had sun and moderate temperatures all through pruning. We didn't have a drop of rain. Good for working outside, but I've been a little worried about the lack of rain. Then right on schedule it started to rain yesterday.



Bottling went very well, and we got out offer letters with out incident. I think the only thing we're hoping for is good sales. We need that to keep things going of course, and we've heard many wineries are struggling right now.



We really wanted to purchase some new equipment this year. A shaker table for the de-stemmer, and a lift - sorting table combo. Right now though we're being conservative and holding off on those things until we see how the next two releases go. We still may decide to pay down some debt instead of getting the equipment. We just aren't really anxious to take more bank financing with things the way they are, and would rather hold off or offer equity in the business for the money to buy equipment.



Hopefully the moon will keep cooperating, and it will all work out in 2009.

Quiet Nights at Home

Our label says "We enjoy wine with friends, over special meals or on quiet nights at home." When we started making wine it was really important for me to make wine that fit our lifestyle. Stef and I like to open a bottle before dinner and have a glass as we cook. We will then sit down and enjoy the wine with our meal, and Stefania in particular like to have just a little left at the end of the meal to savor.



That means the wine needs enough friendly fruit to stand on its own, but enough balance and acidity to go with food, and finally enough complexity to be interesting when the meal is over. That's exactly what we've tried to make.



The funny thing is we rarely get to drink our own wine on those quiet nights. Most of the time we open a bottle it's a hectic social event, or a busy wine tasting. We might get to sneak a little sip, but we never get to savor an entire bottle.



A few nights ago though, we decided to make a point to open one of our bottles with a simple dinner we made.



I bought some head on prawns at an Asian market near my work and Stef spiced them with a New Orleans / Cajun style rub. I grilled them over a hot grill and we would peel and eat them right from the skewers.





Stefania loves "plain white rice", so I made us a small pot. The sweet starch of the rice would help cut the heat of the shrimp. She just bought me these silly plates with cows and pigs and chickens on them. I think they are so kitchy, and I love them.





Stef had put the kitchen tractor to work and we would have some fresh baked, hand made bread also.

I opened a bottle of our 2006 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and poured us a little in some nice glasses. We enjoyed a little wine as we cooked, then with the simple dinner, and just enough was left to savor at the end of the meal.

It was a simple Thursday night dinner, just the two of us. Just what we are talking about when we say; "quiet nights at home."

Winter Release

Tuesday we will be mailing out our Winter Release letter.

It will be our first 100% Santa Cruz Mountains release, our 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains.

Our Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet is from two vineyards on the eastern side of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. Grapes from both vineyards were harvested on 10/20/2006 by hand in the early morning. The wine contains 94% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Harvest Moon Vineyard and 6% Merlot from the Elandrich vineyard. The grapes were 100% de-stemmed but not crushed and then co-fermented.

Fermentation went well and the wine was pressed on 11/2/2006 then transferred to two new Seguin Moreau French Oak barrels and two older French Oak barrels. The wine spent a total of 21 months in barrel before being bottled. Final alcohol was 14.0 % with a pH of 3.81. 97 cases were produced.

The wine is dark ruby in color with a distinct nose of mint, eucalyptus, and crushed berries. The wine is plush and long on the palate with currant, berry and dark ripe fruit. The wine shows a long and full finish with fully ripe tannins and spicy notes that compliment the deep, dark fruit. This wine promises a long life in bottle.

Three packs will be $120, with 6 packs at $220.

We've increased allocation amounts for many people this time around. With such uncertainty in the economy we think some people may be cutting back, and wanted to offer those that purchase a chance at more wine. This wine just won a silver medal at the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition. The first wine we've entered in a competition.

Chaine d'Or Pruning

Yesterday we tackled our biggest pruning job the 22 year old Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon at Chaine d'Or. Last year this vineyard took us over 3 days to do. There were a lot of plants in the process of recovery from Eutypa that needed retraining. We were also converting everything over to our strict method of leaving two shoots on each spur and just 8-12 spurs per plant.

Here our crew is in the middle of the vineyard working on a section of Merlot. We started the day with Jerry, Estella, Ingrid, Amber, Wes, Stefania and I. Axle was there to play with the dogs, and just as Amber, Ingrid and Wes had to leave, Kathy and Millie showed up.

The sun was out, but it was cool, so we stayed covered up to avoid sunburn and stay warm. Jerry is working on a Cabernet vine here. You can see the limited number of shoots we keep on each plant. This increases ripeness and sun exposure and intensifies the fruit. This plant is very small and not typical of the vineyard. The vineyard has a very tough turn and most of the plants in the turn, like this one, have been hit by the tractor at one time or another and had to be restarted.

These plants are more typical of the gnarled old vines in the vineyard. This is a section of Cabernet after the crew has passed through. We also made an effort last year to lower the spurs as much as possible. After 20 years some of the spurs were into the first set of wires.

Now that we have the Eutypa out of the vineyard, we'll return to the practice of leaving the cuttings in the middle of the rows. We will then run the tractor over the cuttings with the mower attached and create a mulch. That will return the nutrients in the plants back to the soil. Last year we hauled out all the cuttings to avoid any Eutypa problems, but there were no infected plants at all last season, so we feel we now have it out of the vineyard.

As the sun dropped a little fog came out in the mountains and made for a great end to the afternoon. The crew whittled away to take care of personal errands and Stefania and I left Jerry and Estella at 4PM to finish up one last row. We had to get home to clean up for a 6PM dinner. We gave Jerry Sunday and Monday off. What took us over three days last year, took just one this year.

That's a great sign that we have the vineyard in the kind of shape we want it. It was easy to prune, with few corrections to make, no suckers to deal with, and no excess shoots. Just 8-12 spurs, 2 quick cuts per spur and on to the next plant. As I pruned I was pretty excited by the prospects for this season. So far the moon cycle and weather have been perfect. Our crew is fast, efficient, and really knows the vines. We are only two weeks into the year, but I'm feeling good about the shape we've got each vineyard in and the pruning we've done is setting us up for a good start.

Bottling Day

I'll be very honest, I was on the verge or a major meltdown all week long because Paul had to be at the day job today and we were scheduled to bottle 3 lots of wine.



I wasn't melting down over him not being there, it was my own anxiety about "what if something, anything, goes wrong". The biggest item of contention was getting there by 7:45 a.m. For one, I'm never on time and I almost always get lost when I'm on my own, ok, that's an exaggeration, I mostly do ok, but still, it's a long windy road from home to Big Basin and I wasn't looking forward to a solo ride.



As the sun was coming up and the sky was a pretty pinkish hue, I was still grumbly and cursing but trying to talk myself out of the anxiety attack that I was on the verge of. I was trying to put a happy spin on being up a such an early hour. For example, the only other time I get up and go mobile that early is if we're going on vacation and we have an early flight. So there, that cheered me up, I talked myself into believing I was headed to a mini-day vacation, afterall, this isn't really hard work and it still beats a traditional day job.



The drive was fine, and I only got stuck behind a couple of slow moving vehicles twice, not long enough to make me late.



I did manage to arrive on time (woohoo!), my crew showed up just after me and we started the line around 8:30. The experience compared to the last two times was about a million percent better. Holy moly, let me tell you. Maybe it takes three times of doing it, or maybe we finally got a guy that knows how to run the line. Yep, guy. One of them.



The last two nightmare bottlings with a billion delays had 3 guys running the line, plus our help inside the truck.



Anyway, my apologies for not taking a single photo, I didn't have Pauls slick iphone and didn't remember to grab my own camera this morning.



In all we processed about 290 cases of wine today. Now in bottle are the 2007 Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains, 2007 Haut Tubee Red Wine, and the 2007 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah wines.



I headed down the mountain around 1p.m., got some yahoo poophead in a red sports car right up my rear bumper on the windy road for just a short while (until I could find a reasonable turnout) and he zoomed off ahead of me. Mind you, I drive fast and aggressive when it's just me in the car, but I wasn't in a little zippy sportster so I minded my own business and kept a steady beat. I caught up to him once, he was stuck behind a pick up truck hauling trash bins, then he over took him too. Zoom. Whoosh. Zip. Gone.



At the crossroads, I got onto highway 17, headed south, and was crawling along at the pathetically slow speed of 55 (cruise control set. boring.) and I get just to the bottom of the hill, make that first bend in Los Gatos and there he was. The Sucker got nailed by a motorcycle cop.



I waved.



It was a great bottling day.

Bread and Wine

I'm pretty sure Paul took pictures of us the other night drinking our own wine but then he didn't post them. If I can distract him enough today maybe I'll get him to upload to this posting.

I was goofing off the other day and took a picture of my baking station, since so many people have asked me if I'm using a bread machine. The answer is no, I'm not using a bread machine, I'm using the KitchenAid stand mixer, as seen on the kitchen cart below:

If you're familiar with the wine forums at all you know that people have their own monikors that they go by. Some of them are pretty cool and keep within the theme of wine. Well, the same goes for the Kitchen Aid forum I found out. But it's not the names they go by on the forum, it's the names they have assigned to their stand mixers. While some people have named their stand mixers, I have not. We just call it the Kitchen Tractor, which is kind of a name I guess.

Long story longer about this thing -- I bought it after visiting friends (correction, Paul bought it for my birthday) who had one and they made this great dessert with it. After watching it perform I declared it a Must Have for whipping cream at home. Yep. Whipping Cream. Well, I unpacked it, I read thru all of the recipes that came with it and the first thing I tried was bread.

Since then, just over a year ago, I've baked hundreds of loaves of bread and whipped cream maybe twice. I've also made raviolis, spaghetti noodles, ground pepper relish, ground pork, beef, chicken, and juiced citrus. This is, in my opinion, the best kitchen tool you can have.

I've been taking all sorts of bread photos, and the latest and greatest was an olive loaf with roasted garlic, sundried tomatoes, and kalamata olives.

I pretty sure Paul thought I would be a bored housewife without a formal "day job" to go to, but between the pruning, the bookkeeping, the bottling, and logistics of managing it all and then some, AND getting to stay home and bake fresh bread, I am anything BUT bored. Not to mention I get to drink wine at this job...if I could sit still long enough to enjoy it.

Sunburns, Blisters, and Bruises

That mostly sums it up for the first round of pruning.



Actually, I don't think anyone was sunburned at Crimson Clover the other day despite record high temperatures and full bright sun! It was a gorgeous California winter day. If you recall last year when we pruned at Chaine d'Or, we bailed out midday because of freezing rain. The following day it snowed in the foothills, and we definitely felt that coming!! Brrrr.



The blisters come with the territory, you toss another bandaid on and keep going. I was glad this year to notice my new work books were a bit more broken in and less rigid on my heels. Paul loves telling the story of us at Mel Cottons and asking the clerk for waterproof boots for me. She came back with some cute little slip on plastic clogs... He was very patient and explained that no, this wasn't some tidy little garden to putter in, that it was heavy duty farming and the boots needed to be sturdy and waterproof.



At one point I over asserted myself with the vine cutting and jabbed it right down onto my thigh. See, there is this thrusting motion you do when you're disengaging it from the wires, and I was perhaps a little overzealous about it. I have this fantastic welt and bruise, but I know it's temporary, just a glaring reminder I need to be more careful.



Pruning Crimson could have been more peaceful and I would have been able to let my mind wander about to other interesting thoughts, but the fumes from the neighbors gas chainsaw were a bit distracting. So was the roaring rip of each tree branch he cut. Just about the time we thought he was done, he fired up the chipper....



The greatest highlight was watching Truffles (Jazzy) play with the vineyard dog Rascal. They're about the same size, she's a French Bulldog (that snorts like a piglet, which is why I call her Truffles), and he's some type of Terrier mix. They were a cute ball of fur chasing each other about in the short grass.



I'm not sure if Paul or I have a picture of her yet, but we'll put one up soon.

Crimson Clover Pruning

Yesterday was a beautiful day to be outside. It was sunny but cool and no wind to speak of. We were working with the same crew from the day before. We're still way ahead of schedule and we thought we could probably finish this vineyard in one day, including clean up of the cuttings.

The Crimson Clover vineyard is in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains just outside of the town of Morgan Hill. The crew always likes working in this vineyard because it's a moderate 4-5% slope and a clean VSP system. We've managed this vineyard since 2007. At first it was a mess of suckers and poor training, but we got it corrected that first year, and now it's fairly easy to maintain.

This is us wrapping up for the day. Jerry is hauling out the cuttings. This is the worst part of pruning. It's like playing 'Pick Up Sticks' with 15,000 sticks, or roughly 1000 deep knee bends. I'm still sore today.

This is a picture of a finished vine. You can see the vines are still pretty young. This vineyard was put in in 2005 but since the pruning wasn't right the first two years it's really more like a 4 year old vineyard than a five year old.

The vineyard owners were out to see how things were going. I told them we're very happy with this vineyard and we think it will be a star for us. Tasting the 2008 wine in barrel before Christmas I thought it was the best wine I'd made at that stage. It's deep, dark and multi layered with tons of ripe fruit. We have it in 2/3 new oak right now, and I think this will be a great wine. I'm really excited for this vineyard in 2009. We're going to put in even more work with it this year.

We're hoping we can get the yield to about 3 tons, and make 150 cases or so. That will be the limit for this site though so it will always be a small production wine for us.

And the final picture is my self portrait for the day. I was actually trying to take a picture of the Crimson Clover coming up, but what the heck.

Pruning Arastadero and Vista Verde

This has become our standard first picture. A comfortable late start at 8:06 AM, enough time for it to warm up to 36 degrees.





The entrance to the Arastadero Vineyard. We take care of this vineyard for Big Basin Vineyards. They use the fruit for a private client. This hill is very steep and difficult to work on.

A 'before' picture. This vineyard has a mix of two different types of trellis. We've modified one from a four arm system into an 's' system. Instead of 4 fruiting arms, there are two in the shape of an S. This section is a more standard 5 wire VSP system. Stef and Jerry had finished all but 8 rows the day before. With six experienced pruners we completed the last 8 rows in just about 30 minutes.

Here's an 'after'. The clipping we left for Jerry to pick up later when we're under less of a time crunch. We're trying to complete all of our pruning before St Vincent's day on the 22nd. That was the traditional pruning schedule, and since we've done that, we've had great luck with our vineyards.

The next stop was the little Harrison vineyard about a mile away. We installed this two summers ago with 170 Syrah plants. It took us just 30 minutes to finish here as well. The plants were pruned back to two buds this year to start their arms. Usually in year two you would have arms, but because we planted this so late the first year (after the 4th of July) it's more like a 1 1/2 year old vineyard than two years.

Our final stop for the day was Vista Verde, our newest vineyard. This is about 1 1/4 acres of Pinot Noir on a very steep hill. We thought this might take us two days to do because of the slope. Here's Stefania, with Kathy and 'Jazzy' in the background. You can see how steep this site is.

Here's Jerry working in the same area of the hill. When we're restoring a vineyard like this, I prefer to only use experienced pruners who know how to deal with 'do overs' and 'restarts' on plants. Our crew yesterday was Millie, Kathy, Jerry, his wife Estella, Stefania and me.

Estella, Jerry and Millie working in a little bowl of the vineyard. In the summer this bowl will actually catch the afternoon sun, but in the middle of winter it was still shady at noon.

Here's a 'before' picture, and a good example of why a new vineyard can take so long. The pruning here was not terrible, it just wasn't up to our quality. There is too much growth in the center, that encourages mildew, and some shoots are too long. That weakens other shoots and the plant spends its energy growing leafs instead of getting fruit ripe.

Here it is after fixing the problems. The center of the vine is now cleaned up and the spacing is right. This vine will now grow 10-12 shoots.

This was a hard vineyard to work. It was steep and needed a lot of expert care. One of the funny things from the day was that there are parts so steep, you need to get a running start at the vine, jump up the hill and grab it by the base. You then dig in your knees and prune. When you're done you slide back down off the hill and do the entire thing over again.

Still we had a great crew and we finished by 3 PM. More on today's pruning coming tomorrow.

Canopy Management

I started canopy management yesterday. Most people call it pruning, but as I was cutting the vines, I remembered the problem areas from last year and spent extra time visualizing the growth.

There were plants with spurs too close together that I opened up and some on the upper hillside that are shaded thru much of the day that needed thinning. Proper pruning now means less time going back and cutting green growth.

One thing I've learned for certain is that the vines will grow no matter what you do to them, they persevere. A bad prune job, they grow anyway. Bad training, they grow anyway. Too close together or spaced too far apart, they grow anyway.

I like that as I'm working with each plant, it will tell me what it wants. When I pull a cane down to retrain the cordon, it will let me pull the one that is directionally meant to be used. With little or no resistance.

As I was working yesterday I kept myself amused by thinking of past day jobs and the trivial annoyances of working in an office environment. Nobody jammed the photocopier yesterday, the printer didn't run out of toner, no worries about the fax machine paper supply, I didn't have to drink bad coffee, and there were no extra perky in-your-face-first-thing-in-the-morning people with their sing-songy Good Mornings.

Just me, Gerry, the clippers, and the vines.

We're heading out again this morning, with Paul, Kathy, Millie, and Truffles, and Gerry will bring Estella with him. We'll finish Arastradero then make our way up the hill to Vista Verde to get started. With this size crew today we may even finish VV. I'll make sure that Paul takes pics while we're there so he can upload them tonight.

Vista Verde Vineyard

We'll be adding a new vineyard site for 2009. Located at 1300 feet off Alpine Road near Summit Road this is a 7 year old vineyard of Pinot Noir.



We're calling it Vista Verde, after the small development of houses it's located in.



The vineyard is on a steep slope and is just over 1 1/4 acres. Total yield should be about 1 ton this year and 1 1/2 -2 tons long term. The trellis is a good VSP 5 wire system.



There was a landscaping crew there when we stopped by putting in some native ground cover. You can see the slope of the vineyard well in this picture.

There was frost on the ground. This will be a cool site for us. Just right to get Pinot Noir ripe. The vineyard is just about 2 miles from Chaine d'Or, although it's on a separate ridge line so driving between the two takes about 20 minutes.

Here's the vista in Vista Verde.

The vineyard has a good drainage system in place and is paved from top to bottom which should make working in it just a little easier for us.

There are about 15 dead plants we need to replace, and some poor pruning and training we need to correct, but over all the vineyard is in good shape. We expect a smaller yield this year as we fix the training and pruning on about 100 plants. Most will be 'do overs'. On those we will restart the cordons from the trunk, and those plants will only have 1-2 clusters instead of 8-10. Next year though they will be ready to produce back at normal levels.

New Vineyard Resident

Just the other day Paul and I were in the kitchen doing chores and he startled me telling me to look outside, "quick!". I thought the neighbors cat was getting into something again, or up to no good. The cat in reference is one we are doing battle with since a recent pooping incident on our lawn...a cat that poops like a dog, so annoying.

I stopped what I was doing to peer out the window, and there it was, a huge bird of prey on the fence. Hurray! A bird to keep the dove, pigeon, squirrel, cat, population in check. He was awesome but didn't stay long enough for a good enough look to identify him.

This afternoon as I was putting away laundry, I saw him again from the bedroom window this time. On the fence. Only this time he was going to be put for awhile...he scored a dove.

I did the best I could with an ancient digital camera on zoom but they are pretty grainy, even on the best resolution setting...pictures of Coop (Coopers Hawk) are below. We hope he doesn't pick on Frederick, our annual "pet" Yellow Rumped Warbler that winters in our backyard year after year.

Good Bye to 2008

Grape growers never say there is such a thing as a bad year. We say "It was a great year, I hope I never have another one like it again".

As I close out the year with a cold that's keeping us home, there are some good things for sure. The wine we made was very good this year. Our sales went up again, almost 200% for the year. We had a lot of fun, made new friends, and had great times with old friends. The 49ers fired Mike Nolan, and America refused to hire Sarah Palin. (I called the combination of the two events a sure sign we are turning away from admiration for stupid people.)

We had visitors from Vermont, New York, France, and places in between at the winery this year. We also had some great parties. Gerard holding a possum by the tail is still a highlight everyone talks about. My day job went very well. We really turned our group around and customers noticed. We got by on one car, and one day job, and kept things afloat.

It wasn't a bad year. It was a hard year. And it reminds me of stories my grandparents would tell. They laughed at the stories, and remembered times with friends and family fondly, but they were hard times, times they didn't want to see again.

I think the right way to send out 2008 is the way Stefania has sent things out she hasn't liked since age 4. If you know her, and you've seen her mad, you've seen this face. :)

Here she says good by to 1973, and 2008.

Suburban Vineyard II

The trellis wires were the perfect place to hang "stained glass" cookies for a photo op.






More cookies on the wire...







These are the "Hot Tub" vines, you can kind of see the infamous tub in the background.



Originally the vines in the back were head trained, like the ones in the front, but we're also re-doing the backyard. We had Jerry pull out more than half the vines in the back so that we could train the existing ones on a new trellis system. The posts and wires are in, but it looks goofy until we prune. When I do the Suburban Vineyard Backyard photos you'll see before and after.



For now, enjoy pictures of the holiday cookies Kathy and I made hanging on the wires.

Suburban Vineyard Life

This was taken in 2006 when Paul added Mourvedre to the front (over by the blue tarp).

Later that Spring, Paul is watering the young vines in the walkway.

Another view of the "before" vineyard from the street.

And then in 2008 I decided I was tired of watering the lawn and we had Jerry start the tear-down.

The plants and concrete all came out from the front yard to prepare for a mini-demonstration vineyard.

And I mean, all of the concrete...

Jerry removed all traces of lawn and set new wood and metal posts. Here he is below starting to string the wires.

And so it will sit like this thru the winter until March when the baby vines come. Paul has ordered 25 Mourvedre (5 rows with 5 plants each) and Thompsons Seedless for the plot under the magnolia tree in the parking strip. A neighbor down the street requested at least one table grape plant so we're putting in 4. Originally we wanted to put a seedless muscat but none were available.

The plan is to put up one of those "take one" boxes like they do for property sale information, but ours will include flyers on the project, it's costs, and how much water usage we anticipate in the coming months/years. The rest of the landscaping will be drought resistant and require minimal watering. As for the backyard, that's another blog with more pictures coming soon!

I'll update the front vineyard progress after the new plants go in, for now, it's an ugly posted dirt patch with good intentions.

Finishing Racking

Last Friday we headed back up to Chaine d'Or to finish racking our 2007 Cabernets. I wanted to leave the wine in tank just a little longer this time to let it settle a bit more. Last time we racked the wine only settled for a couple hours and this was a bit of a 'make up'.



We rack for three reasons. First by transferring the wine to tank it lets us clean out the gunk, or lees in the bottom of the barrels. It also lets the wine settle in tank, getting more of the solid bits out. Second it allows us to expose the wine to some oxygen and that helps soften the tannins of the wine. Kind of like a giant decanter. Finally it lets us add sulfur to the wine in one even shot, which I think is better that barrel by barrel.



Sulfur is very important to keep out the little bugs that can ruin wine. Maybe later I'll do a blog on the myths about sulfites, but for right now I'll just leave it at :If it doesn't say "Contains Sulfites, it should say Contains Bacteria."



Off again at 36 degrees and 8:30 AM



Jerry getting all the barrels ready to fill. We're getting to be a really good team at this. Jerry, Stefania and I each have tasks that we need to do, and we work very efficiently at each one. Jerry does the set up, cleans barrels and tanks, breaks down equipment and helps fill. Stef does sulfur and additions, lab readings, cleans barrels and helps empty the tank. I move barrels, do set up and break down, top off barrels and decide on sulfur amounts and wine movement.



We pump very gently at about a level of 5.8 amps, it's actually a little slower than using gravity.




Stef measuring sulfur. We added 50ppm on this addition. She has a new sulfur lab that will give us exact amounts of free and bound sulfur, plus total sulfur so that we can fine tune our additions even more.

Facebook II

Yes, I did in fact call Facebook "Lamebook". Here's how it went down. My brother has a teenage daugther and she signed up. To keep an eye on her and what-not, he signed up, and then pitched it to me as a great way to stay in touch. Hah.

I played along, created a profile, uploaded a couple of photos and even added a real friend or two. Then, after people started to find me, a person whom I would not really consider a friend, asked me to add them on. See, this person was a former colleague from a job many years ago, one that I was glad to move on from. Out of curiosity, I went to this persons profile page and found them to have well above 600 "friends". And that was the turning point for me when I decided to delete my account and move back to real life and real interactions with people I really know.

There's an ad on tv for HP products and they pitch the computer as being "personal again". And I do agree that the internet and computers are great tools for maintaining relationships, however...

For Paul to maintain an account is fantastic, it gives our friends and customers a chance to chat and keep up with us on a more personal level. I enjoy looking over his shoulder as he updates his own profile or scrolls thru other peoples messages, it's a fun diversion for a few moments, but I don't feel compelled to spend a lot of time browsing.

Next blog coming up, as promised, photos of the latest vineyard project and maybe even an update from Paul on another Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot vineyard we're negotiating with.

To our Chicago friends: We are so bummed to not be coming in for New Years, have a great time at the game if you go and we'll see you later in the year.

Facebook Redo

Well I wasn't able to make Facebook go away. Stef still insists it's 'Lamebook', and I still would rather have friends over for wine and dinner to know what they've been up to, but I have been keeping up on it now.

At least every few days with a status, and eventually getting around to friend requests and figuring out what pokes and wall writings are. If I don't respond right away, don't worry, I will eventually.

We finished racking today. Stef tried out our new sulfur tester and we did some work on the 2008's. I'll have a couple pictures tomorrow and a bigger update. For now I'm climbing into bed with some hot tea to see if I can get a cold out of my head before the New Year.

Racking Day

We didn't start too early today, I was still up before 7am, but Stef and I enjoyed some coffee, fresh orange juice and the newspaper in bed until about 8:30. Our Orange tree is finally ripe and we're harvesting a few each morning.

Jerry arrived at 9am and he and I headed up to Chaine d'Or for the days tasks. Stef stayed behind to bake some cookies, do a delivery and get caught up on some billings.

It's been cold in California. 36 degrees when we headed out at 9:05


Jerry and I prepped all the hoses and tanks to get wine. We had broken everything down and cleaned it all after our last pressing. We racked our 2007 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and the 2007 Chaine d'Or Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Both are turning out fantastic. The fruit in 2007 is very intense and deep and these wine will have wonderful noses.


We also got the lab report back on our 2008 Chardonnay and it's finished Malolactic fermentation. Great to have that done before Christmas. That meant it was time to add sulfur to the Chardonnay. I prepped individual amounts to go into each barrel, just about 21 grams, or 50 parts per million. I'm doing a little higher now at the first sulfuring than in the past.

This seems to be a growing trend from many winemakers I admire. The ideas is to get a good amount in the wine early and kill anything before it can get started.


We worked just about 4 hours before heading home. Emory and Tracy came by to help and learn a little about the racking process, which went smoothly except for one loose hose that dumped about 1/2 gallon on Emory. He now has an official pair of winery pants.

Fun with the TTB

United States Department of the Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco, Tax and Trade Bureau. They go by TTB. That's the agency in charge of all federal laws around wine and collecting taxes on wine. They also approval all labels.

The approval process can be very mystifying, and approval can depend as much on the person reviewing your application as anything. It really can be very random, but that's not the point of this little rant.

The TTB has an entire set of rules on what you can say about where a wine was produced. These laws were mostly drawn up in the 1970's. The top 'ranking' is Estate. That's the most strict labeling in theory. To call something Estate, it must be grown, produced, cellared and bottled on property owned by the winery. The thought in the 70's was this would be a way for consumers to identify the very best wines.

It never worked that way of course. Gallo can claim a bottle of jug wine is Estate. Even if it came from 1000's of tons grown on 1000's of acres in Monterey and then trucked to their giant tank facility in the Central valley. They own all that property so that, according to the rules, is Estate wine. The term Estate never really caught on as a quality indicator, and with the rise of winemakers like Brian Loring, Adam Lee and Wells Guthrie, who owned no vineyards it became even less a quality indicator. Still the rules remain as well as rules for all kinds of other things you can put on the label. Produced By, Produced and Bottled By, Cellared By, Bottled By, all have their own set of rules. In theory these rules are to help the consumer. In practice they are in fact worse than meaningless, they are misleading.

Our Haut Tubee is a perfect example. We grow that wine on our Estate. Well it's our yard, no one but the TTB would mistake it for an Estate, it's a track home in a suburb, but it still counts as an Estate. The wine is then made by us at Chaine 'd Or. We produce it and cellar it there. According to all the rules we can call that Estate Wine since we manage Chaine 'd Or and the grapes are grown in a vineyard we own.

We're not bottling it at Chaine d'Or. Bottling equipment is expensive and prone to failure, so most small wineries use a third party bottling company to do bottling. It's called the bottling truck and the truck uses your bond to bottle, in effect you rent the truck and crew and provide extra labor. The TTB doesn't care about this, it can still be called Estate.

But now things get silly. For logistical reasons we're going to have the bottling truck go to Big Basin Vineyards for our next bottling. 9 of the 12 barrels we want to bottle are at Big Basin, so we are going to move the other three there to bottle. This is called a bond to bond transfer. We transfer the wine to Big Basin. I then write Big Basin a power of attorney letter and allow them to do business as Stefania Wine for two days. They then file a statement in Santa Cruz County that they will be Stefania Wine for two days. All these hoops are to keep things legal and make sure we're not trying to hide wine, and thus excise tax from the TTB (The tax on three barrels is about $50, it costs about $300 to do all these paperwork steps)

So we are good to go. But guess what, we can't call the wine Estate anymore. In fact we can't even call it Produced and Bottled by. The only thing we can legally claim is "Bottled by Stefania Wine." Which of course is the one and only thing that is not true. The wine was grown, produced, aged, and cellared by us on our estate, but bottled by Big Basin Vineyards.

So when you see these phrases on the back of bottles, ignore them, they are totally and completely meaningless.

We're Still Here!

We just took a break from blogging while we recovered from harvest and got a few other pressing tasks done.

The front yard at home has been torn down, and a new trellis system put in. Stef promises pictures soon. We've also been going round and round with labels approvals from the ttb, I'll post more on that later.

We wrapped up the Winter Futures Program and that went very well, and we're preparing for bottling in January of our Pinot Noir and Haut Tubee. It's been busy, just more office work than winery or vineyard work, so it doesn't seem very exciting to write about.

We did end our set up with our shipper though. We were having a lot of trouble with orders, inventory and compliance with them and just decided to take the entire shipping thing in house now. It was a painful process, but we picked up our last wine inventory from them on Friday.

The good news from the entire thing is we have 6 cases of 2006 Haut Tubee that we didn't know about. We had thought we were totally out. If anyone is interested please email me. It will be first come-first serve at $240 a case, no charge for shipping.