Here's what I've seen so far. Although I've followed the situation in other areas I've only talked in detail with growers in my area, and Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch in Mendocino. Keep that in mind as the situation can be very different in different parts of the state.
So far 2007 has been the easiest year I've seen since I've started in 2001. There actually have been comparisons to 1997, which was also viewed as easy.
So what does easy mean?
It means that there has been a leisurely pace to vineyard work and no unusual actions needed in the vineyard. At this stage in the growing season you're looking at four main themes:
1. disease pressure - mildew2. potential yields3. green growth or vigor4. water stress and situation for the remainder of the growing season.
1. disease pressure. Mildew pressure has been the lowest I've ever seen. Many have cut back their spraying drastically. Casey didn't do his first spraying until May. Only Bradley Brown at Big Basin Vineyards has told be he's seen any pressure this year, and he zapped it early with oil.
Spraying has also been very easy. 2005 in particular and a lesser amount in 2006 were difficult years. The rain patterns often had us out 2-3 times a week. This year we've been able to stay on an every 2 weeks schedule. You have to spray after each rain if you use organics or time your spraying for dry periods with systemics. In 2005 and 2006 the weather drove us nuts. We'd spray, it would rain, then not give enough gap between rain to get another spray to set. To make matters worse there would be calm periods between storms, which lets Powdery Mildew thrive. It meant a lot of work, and some growers still had Powdery Mildew problems in both years, and black rot problems in 2006. It was a challenge and although the best growers brought in good healthy grapes, it was still a lot of work.
This year we've had rain, gone out and sprayed, the wind kicks up (which helps prevent Powdery Mildew) and then relaxed until the next spraying was needed.
The net result? Healthy flowering, fruit set and cluster size. Potential yields look good, and unless something dramatic happens in the summer, we're not worried about mildews and rots.
2. Potential yields - At this point in the season yields look good. Some plants are throwing 3rd clusters, but not many. Flowering is still underway but set appears good and the plants healthy. Good growers will drop 3rd clusters which tend to not catch up, but every thing was very even this year. Plants flowered and set all together, which leads to even ripeness.
3. Green Growth - Vigor. This was the demon in 2005. The rain patterns lead to excessive growth. That encouraged Powdery Mildew, and meant many growers had to increase their farming labor 25-75%. There was a lot of work to do to bring in healthy grapes and balance vines.
This year the plants have been late, 1-2 weeks, but even and controlled in their growth. I've had to do no shoot thinning or lateral removal before flowering. In 2005 I had to make 2 complete passes through the vineyards.
I've also had very little need to remove excess buds or double shoots. The plants have just been balanced and not needed extra fussing. The lateness is not a concern to anyone I've talked with, or myself. We're not pushing things severely like 1998 or 1999, it just looks like 1-2 weeks later than normal, or about the same as last year.
Although we have only seen one heat spike, our degree days seem fine, and the heat is really needed over the 90 days following flowering. The entire summer is ahead of us, and it is possible we'll have lower alcohol, lower pH wines again in 2007, like 2005 and 2006, but that will play out in July and August. No one is concerned on not getting grapes ripe.
4. Water stress and situation for the remainder of the growing season.
It has been a drought year, with rainfall at 30-50% of normal in many locations. I've turned on my drip systems later than I have in the last few years. In 2005 I had them off all season. Still the amount has been small 1/2 gallon per week and precautionary.
Others are doing the same. No one seems particularly worried, just cautious in getting water in the ground. We've seen no drought stress at this time. If things get really hot this summer it could be a concern. Those on reservoir water are worried that they can make it through a hot summer with the water on hand, but thus far it's not been an issue.
So overall? 'Easy'. The year is off to a good start, and for consumers I think it looks particularly good. Both 2005 and 2006 were challenging years. The kind that took hard work in the vineyards and separates the good growers and winemakers from the average. Maybe a little like 2003 in Bordeaux, where some made great wines, and some struggled.
2007 is off to a start like 2000 Bordeaux, the kind of vintage that lifts everyone and makes the average good, and the good great. BUT, the real work and risk is ahead. There's a long summer to get through, and the Fall is always key to quality.

(Also posted on Wine Spectator Forums)

Visit to San Martin

Last summer we got a call from a family south of San Jose in the small town of San Martin. They grow walnuts there, and a few years ago planted about 200 Syrah and Grenache vines. The vines were in trouble and they didn't know what was wrong.

We went down to take a look and found that Powdery Mildew was the main problem. The vineyard was actually in pretty good shape. Most of the time we get a call like that we find a vineyard that has not been properly pruned, suckered and tied up. In those cases the damage to the vine is severe. Grapes are wild aggressive plants, and with improper care, they will grow like a weed. If the trunk and canes have not been kept in shape by suckering, pruning and tying up, it takes three years to restore them. The same amount of time to start over with new plants.

Their experience with the walnut orchard though had served them well. The pruning was good, the trunks suckered and strong, and the plants trained properly. They had just made a few small mistakes. They had watered too much and the vines had gotten to vigorous. It's very common for people to think vines need more water than they really do.

That vigor had created an environment that let Powdery Mildew thrive and they were not sure what, how and when to spray. That's the other common mistake people can make. It was too late to save the grape crop. Once mildew spreads to the grapes, they will never get ripe enough to make wine. They make look ripe, but the mildew prevents sugar development and stunts all flavor.

As we explained all this too them last year the entire family came out to take notes, ask questions and learn all they could. I really enjoyed our time with them. Their enthusiasm to learn was really fun.

This year they followed the watering and spraying schedule I left them with. Calling just once to track down a Powdery Mildew spray I recommended to stop the active spores left from last season.

A few weeks ago though they emailed worried about the vines. They looked 'wild and out of control', and they worried about mildew again. I made sure they didn't do anything right away. Doing anything while the plants flower in late May will ruin the crop, so I assured them: "wait, and we'll be out in a few weeks."

This morning we headed down and spent a few hours with them again. The vines were doing well, still full of vigor so they had gotten very bushy. Stef and I showed them how to thin the shoots, and remove laterals, then tie the vines into the trellis. We worked half a row with them until they had it down, and left them working away. They were happy that the wild vines now looked like the well tended vineyards they had just seen in Paso Robles.

Going down and visiting with them is a trip Stef and I both enjoy. A friendly family, full of cheer and enthusiasm about growing grapes and making wine is a trip that is a lot of fun for us. We'll go back in a month or so and check on them, and I'm sure their little vineyard will be doing great.

2005 Loring Pinot Noir Cargasacchi Vineyard

A tasting note? Yeah why not. We had this wine last night with some fresh Salmon and angle hair pasta. The wine had bright cherry flavors. Ripe cherry almost like a cherry soda, and the great silky feel of fine Pinot Noir. It added spicy notes on the finish.

I thought this was the best wine I've ever had from Brian Loring. It was unique to itself. Any attempt to say it tasted like some type of Burgundy would not be accurate. It tasted like a wine from California. But not in the way many are critical of California Pinot Noir, even calling the thick, sweet over-extracted style -Pinot-Zinoir.

This wine was all Pinot Noir, silky, fresh, fruity and spicy, but there was no mistaking it was from California. A great wine, reflecting the effort of Peter Cargasacchi the grower, and Brian Loring the winemaker.

And Brian has been a hero-role model for me for many years. I've followed many of the things he's done. From customer service, to mailing list policies, vineyard sourcing, and probably most importantly, watching how Brian was able to run his wine company and keep his full time high tech job. Next year I think I'll even be switching to his policy of including shipping prices in the price of his wine.

Many people in the wine industry have told me, it's very hard to be both a great business man, and a great winemaker. Drinking Brian's wine last night, was great inspiration and proof, that you can do both.

Flowering

Grape vines, at least those used for wine, are self pollinating. They don't need bees, or birds or any outside help to flower. The flower simply opens up and drops it's pollen on to the seed below. The flowers are tiny, less than 1mm across. The pollinated flowers become the individual grapes in each cluster.

So the success of flowering is very big in determining how big your crop will be each year. The best thing you can do as a farmer to help is -- Nothing. The flowers are so small that it's very easy for the pollen to 'miss' and you end up with a grape pod that won't turn into a grape. These are called 'shot berries'. If you get a lot of shot berries this is called 'shatter'. In that case you end up with a cluster with just a few grapes on it.

So when flowering starts, you want to stop doing anything to the plant. No trimming, no spraying, no shaking the plant in any way. You also hope the wind stays calm, as high wind will cause the pollen to miss, and leads to shatter. Rain or hail is the very worst, it will release the pollen and wash it away.

We've just started to see flowering. So far the weather has been very good, and I've stayed out of the vineyard. I'll have to cut my work back now to things that won't disturb the plants. When flowering is over, we call this 'set'. That means the clusters have set their good berries and the grapes will mature through the summer. Once we have set, I'll return to the vineyards.

Back and Bottled

We wrapped up our 10 days in Oregon and the California Coast on Sunday. Just in time to get to San Francisco on Monday for bottling of our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Uvas Creek Vineyard.

The wine tasted the best of any of our samples. I think we found a real sweet spot to bottle at. My original plan was to bottle in September, but after the last few tastings I thought sooner was better than later. I didn't want to risk drying it out at all, or loosing any fruit for more wood.

The wine was a little low on free Sulfur, so we added a bit at bottling to bring it up to about 30ppm. Still pretty low, most wine gets bottled with 50ppm or more.

The bottling line went mostly with out issue. We were short a couple bottles, but found another case to finish up. There were enough labeled corks this time, and only 1-2 minor snags that slowed us down. We ended up with 48 cases of 750's and 1 case of magnums. They'll be picked up on Friday and taken to storage until we're ready to release the wine, probably in late September.

The addition of sulfur at bottling usually means it's a good idea to let the bottles 'settle' a little longer before releasing them, so we'll do that. I took home a few cases so I can check on the wine as we get close to release and make sure it's ready to go.

A Little Validation or is it Support?

We're out on the road right now. Mostly vacation, our first week long one in a long time, but we're also visiting a few Pinot Noir makers in Oregon.

We're planning on making a little Pinot Noir this year, and next year we may have up to eight tons to make. So a little research was in order.

I'm picky about Pinot. I don't like Pinot to be heavy or jammy. I like Pinot Noir's that are silky and fragrant, with sexy noses that jump from the glass. I like the wine to finish long and clean with just a hint of oak. Chambolle-Musigny is the village in Burgundy I usually prefer. Noted for it's fragrant silky wines. Light, yet packed with flavor.

So we visited a few places, and wrapped up the day at Belle Pente, Stef's favorite Pinot maker. We quizzed the winemaker on everything he does. His wines are fragrant ans silky and packed with flavor.

Many of his tips, are things we do now or things we've heard from other Pinot Noir makers we like. Use gravity not pumps. Rack the wine as little as possible, don't settle the wine before barrel. 1/3 to 1/2 new oak, medium toast never heavy. It's very good to hear those things from winemakers you think are doing a good job, at least when they have those things in common.

It was also good to get some validation on things we do in the vineyard that not every one agrees with. We don't leaf pull, we remove secondary shoots and laterals. We also don't leave one cluster per shoot. We evaluate each cane and plant and then decide on one cluster or two.

Those things can be controversial, so it was very nice to hear that they do the same things, for the same reasons. A little validation we're on the right track.

Sales Status

Have we sold out yet?

Yes and No. How's that for a straight answer?

We have sold all the wine we allocated for direct sales. There's no more left. So in that sense we are sold out. People who are signing up know for our mailing list are getting a note that says: "Sorry we'll have wine for you at our next release". We're at 239 people on the list now.

There is some wine left though. I set aside four cases for 'stragglers' and shipping errors. So far we've not had any shipping problems, and all the direct shipment wine but 9 bottles have gone out, so I'm feeling pretty ok about those other four cases being available. If you already have an order form, you can still get wine. At least until 3 of those 4 cases are gone.

The wine is also available at Unwind on Almaden Expwy, in San Jose for $35 a bottle. They had 5 bottles as of a week ago. It's also available at Olio in Campbell from the wine list for $53 and Twist Bistro in Campbell. Later this month it will also be available at Baci in Vacaville from their wine list.

Vineyard Update

We spent the weekend out working in our vineyards and getting them in good shape for the Spring.

We suckered, which means doing deep knee bends on each plant and removing growth from the trunk. Stef is still sore. We also did some deer proofing, weed-whacking and sprayed for Powdery Mildew in each vineyard.

Elandrich Vineyard in Portola Valley - Looks just a little slow this year. It's been a cool spring and the plants are a little behind. Not enough to worry, if anything that may be good and flowering will happen a little later when the risk of wind is less. Wind causes the berries to not flower correctly (called shatter) and the bunches to not have full grapes. The drought has meant less weeds in the vineyard and I'll have less weed-whacking this year.

The plants are all healthy though and things look good. We'll focus on shoot thinning next, then try new bird netting this year and see if we can't get 1500-2500 pounds out of here this year.

Morgan Hill Vineyard - Had a severe deer attack. It looks like we've recovered most of the plants, and I've got the owner to close the fencing during the day. We aren't expecting any fruit from this vineyard this year, we're just training the plants. We should have about 500 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon from here in 2008, and 2-3 tons in 2009.

Llama Vineyard - Bonny Doon - Suckering was actually pretty easy here. We have bunnies! The rabbits eat the suckers of the lower part of the plant, but they can't reach the fruiting part. Bunnies are actually a help once the plants get established. This vineyard looked really amazing. There are some signs of Powdery Mildew, but we're on top of the spraying and not expecting problems. There should be at least 1000 pounds of Merlot this year.

THings look really nice, and we're hoping for a good year!

How Much Wine?

We didn't make a lot of wine in 2005. Just 100 cases total. 50 cases of Syrah and 50 cases of Canernet Sauvignon. In 2006 we made 16 barrels, 400 cases, so four times more. Still not a huge amount. This year we're planning on 23 barrels, about 575 cases of wine.

I big part of this approach was to not make more wine than we could sell 'part time'. Build up slowly, get the wine out there, build a mailing list and some key restaurants and go from there.

I also know I'm making pretty unique wine. I like wine with a great smell, and well balanced. I don't like thick wines, and I don't like wines with brown flavors or jammy flavors, so I don't want to make wines like that. Those are the kinds of wines that are simple crowd favorites and fill up the bottom shelves at the supermarket. That's easy appeal, and nothing wrong with that, but I'm not out to compete with Little Penguin. I knew our wine would have to find a market. People who like elegance over thickness and pretty scent over ultra ripe flavor.

I know those people are out there, and I know they will love our wines. But I also knew that making 2000 cases to start off with would have been a hard search to find them.

We're never going to make 2000 cases of anything is the bottom line. We'll make small amounts of a few wines from special sites that let me get great balance, scent and flavor in a bottle. 100 cases here, 200 cases there, just small amounts. Copain was successful doing this, and Brian Loring, so I think it can be done. I don't want a confusing amount of wines, or wines from all over. Our wines will always be from mountain vineyards that let me make a wine I'll like. I hope enough other people like them too to let us keep making them.

Sorry for the long laps

A bad streak of colds, allergies, computer problems and getting ready for the Release Party have kept me from blogging.

I should be back at it now though. The party went very well with 40 people coming and trying our wine. We've gotten it out to Olio this week and Twist next week to get on thier wine lists, and almost all the orders have gone out.

I'll be catching up in the vineyard this weekend and trying to update everyone on what's going on!.

The Pinot Quest

I've thought a lot about making a Pinot Noir. The hard part for me has been finding fruit to buy that I like. There's not much Pinot Noir available for sale in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm also very very picky about the vineyards we'll use and making sure that they are farmed for the highest possible quality.

That's meant for the past two years the only vineyard I've been interested in has been the Schultze Family Vineyard in the Southern Santa Cruz Mountains. The Schultze's make what I think is the best Pinot Noir in the Santa Cruz Mountains from their vineyard under the Windy Oaks name. They also sell their fruit to Thomas Fogarty, David Bruce, Testerossa and Mark Alfaro. Jim Schultze is so dedicated to perfection to his vineyard that this is some of the most sought after fruit around.

Every year I call Jim and Judy and beg for fruit, and every year they call back and say, "Sorry". This year though, Jim said, "Maybe, I can give you 2 tons." So my fingers have been crossed, they'll let me know after fruit sets in June if I have a Pinot source. I ordered my barrels just in case, and then haven't thought much about it.

Then last week, through a series of connections another great source became available to me. The owners of one of the oldest and most sought after vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains called Bradley Brown at Big Basin Vineyards. They were looking for a new winemaker and vineyard manager for their vineyard. Bradley is busy this year planting more Syrah, so he referred them to me.

The vineyard is fantastic, but it was too far away for me to take care of well. At 10 acres it would mean I'd have to dedicate almost 100% of my weekend time to it and I couldn't see doing that with all the other vineyards we have (We're up to 5 we take care of, and 3 we consult at now). So, I started making frantic phone calls.

Yesterday I called back the owners and said, "Yes I think we can do it." Ted at Uvas Creek Vineyards is interested in partnering with us on the project. He's a fantastic farmer and he's about 30 miles closer than I am. We can split up the vineyard work, and then split the fruit. We still need to work out the details, but it looks like we'll have 1-2 tons of Chardonnay and 3-4 tons of Pinot Noir this year.

Shipping to Start on Schedule

Barring some real unusual error over the next day or two, shipping will start on schedule next Monday April 9th. I plan to release all orders, to all states next week. The exceptions will be a few special deliveries that have been requested. Those will go out after the official release of April 21st.

The wine should start to arrive as soon as next Wednesday and Thursday to California addresses. We did send out a small number of late offer letters this week. It looked like we would have 2-3 cases left after first round, so I sent out 18 offers for three packs to the first 18 people who had signed up after the first cut off.

I'll deliver restaurant orders starting the week of April 23rd. Olio in Campbell and Baci in Vacaville are confirmed. We will also likely be at Twist in Campbell as well. That should be confirmed next week.

April 21st Release Party

Our official release day will be Saturday April 21st. We're celebrating with a party at Unwined in San Jose : http://www.unwinedshop.com/index.html from 2 to 5pm. There will be snacks, champagne and our 2005 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch by the glass. Unwined will also have a limited number of bottles available for purchase at the store.

If you would like to receive more details please let me know. It looks like we should have about 50 people at the event and it should be a great time.

Unwined will also have their regular selection of by the glass tastes available during the event. We're hoping that we'll have shipments out before that date, I'll update everyone on that in the next blog.

Update on Sales and Allocations

We've had great response so far to our first offer letters. Right now we've booked about 53% of the total wine we have available. It does look like we'll sell out before our official release date of April 21st.

There's a small chance that those people who signed up after March 8th and have not yet gotten an offer letter will get one after April 1st, but I think that's about a 25% chance now. The waiting list for an offer letter has gotten over 30 people long.

I really didn't want to rush people or pull the trick a lot of Napa wineries try and use about 'a long line behind you if you don't buy', but it honestly does look like if you don't get your order in soon, we'll be out of wine.

The situation in the Fall looks even worse. We're averaging 2-3 new sign ups a day right now. I think that very well may keep up through the summer, especially as the wine starts to get out around the country and people try it. We could have a waiting list of 150 by September to get the Cabernet release.

Day Off...Then Back at It.

Yesterday we took our first day off in what I think was eight weeks. It's been a pretty consistent schedule for weeks now. Work the day jobs Monday - Friday. Then weekday nights are spent in the office, sending out letters, processing orders, planing the 2007 budget, and answering emails. The weekends come and it's out in the vineyard or into the winery.

Yesterday we just played around all day. Drove to Monterrey and searched for Spot Prawns. There where none, too windy for the fisherman we heard. But we did stop for some abalone and Vouvray on the wharf.

Today I'll head back off to the vineyards. I need a new weed-whacker. I cooked mine last week. The second engine failure on this one, so I'm not going to try and rebuild it again. It's also time to start spraying sulfur regularly, and even though there is some rain coming Tuesday, I want to get sulfur down.

We have bud break and good growth starting at home, so it's likely I'll see a little today in the mountain vineyards. By next weekend, everything should be starting to grow and the real spray schedule will start.

Vineyard Update.

After frantic weeks of working with banks, credit card companies, shipping companies, cork suppliers and tons of other details we finally got back out in the vineyards this weekend. It was a beautiful weekend in Northern California, really perfect for working. Except for the weed whacker dieing on me, it went pretty well.

Home Vineyard and Ottigurr Vineyard - Both had bud break. These little suburban vineyards are great measuring sticks for how things are going in the mountains. Both are usually 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule of the mountain vineyards. It really helps with planing and scheduling our spread out vineyard sites to be able to track these two closely every day.

Mount Madonna - Reed's Vineyard. I spoke with Reed last week, and things are going well. He's mostly self sufficient now, and just calls on us for advice from time to time. He's decided to not fruit the vineyard this year, and instead concentrate on shoot positioning and cordon strength. A gutsy move on his part, putting off a year three harvest and that first cash flow to concentrate on long term quality. We'll have Tempranillo and Syrah from here in 2008 and Big Basin Vineyards will take the Grenache and probably any Tempranillo we don't use.

Morgan Hill Vineyard. We finished pruning on Saturday. Not sure what this one will be named yet. It's actually not in the town of Morgan Hill, but in the foothills above the town. It's in a little valley behind the hill most people call "Morgan Hill" (Morgan Hill was a person, not an actual hill, but there's a cone shaped hill outside of town that most people call 'Morgan Hill'). This might fit into our long term plans. The vineyard is near Uvas Canyon, where I'd eventually like to plant our estate vineyard, and working it would give me some local experience with this micro-climate. No commercial fruit from here this year, it will be 2008 at least and probably 2009.

Llama Vineyard - Bonny Doon - Looks great. We did some clean up and weed removal. Stef hadn't seen this vineyard in a long time. Millie and I pruned it this year, and Stef was amazed at the progress. This has been a painful vineyard to restore, but it's in great shape now and should get us 1000-2000 pounds this year. This little location is only 6 miles from the ocean, but gets very hot during the day. It was 5 degrees warmer here on Saturday than in San Jose.

Elandrich Vineyard - Portola Valley - The weed whacker killer! It's killed my weed whacker twice now. Millie got started on some serious end post repair work (jackhammer and 50lb bags of cement serious). I got through about 70% of the weed removal. The plants look pretty good here. We need to replace the bird netting with a better quality netting this year, and if we can do that should see 2 tons of fruit or so.

Everything looks in great shape. This experience in the vineyard is helping so much with winemaking and planing too. The work is hard, but I sure do appreciate all the great knowledge gained.

Order Letters Out

We got the first wave of order letters out on Thursday evening. They just made the 6PM cut off at our local post office. Everyone who signed up before 3/1 now has a letter on the way.

We sent a test one to ourselves and that arrived Friday. We also had a few orders trickle in via fax, so we know they are starting to get out, at least in the Bay Area. By next Tuesday - Thursday they should have found there way to everyone.

The second wave will be put together on Monday and go out on Tuesday for those people who signed up after 3/1 or got us a mailing address after the first wave. Pretty exciting time right now for us!

Pictures From Bottling

Available at:

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/133849.6fb8485037f

There will be a link on the website soon too.

We'll be sending out offer letters today. They should start to arrive to you soon.

599 Bottles Of Wine on the Wall......

And none of them fell.

Not that there wasn't a little drama today. The labels have not yet arrived, so those will actually go on the bottles on Thursday. And some of you will get nice corks that say "Stefania" and "2005" on them. Some of you will get the rare and elusive ones with just "2005" on the cork. As in: "It just says '2005' , the cork supplier must not have sent enough corks with 'Stefania' on them".

It also looked like the Cam was not working. At least I could see El Tejano on the chat board going: "The cam is not working".

But all in all it went very well, and there are 587, 750ml bottles, and 6 magnums waiting for pick up to go to the warehouse in Napa. The wine tasted very well, with the floral and fruit notes coming out very well and the nice balance and structure the wine has.

The bottling line went smoothly and I loaded in the clean new bottles at the start of the line. Stefania should have some pictured for me to post up soon.

Update on Bottling!

Bottling will take place this Monday, starting at 11am. You can watch live at :

http://www.crushpadwine.com/

Follow the Cam link to the bottling line.

Wish us luck. I'm nervous as can be that all goes well!

Help I've fallen in my vineyard and can't get up!

In addition to Stefania Wine, we also run Two Gringo's Vineyard Management. Two Gringo's is really just a sub-company that we manage the vineyards we produce grapes from for Stefania Wine. I've never advertised Two Gringo's past a link on the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Page and a small website.

Still, every year I get 25-30 calls from people looking for help with their vineyard projects. Mostly these calls are pretty easy to say no to. They are looking for help outside our area, or they want something specific done like changing posts out in the vineyard. If the vineyard project doesn't fit into the long term plans for Stefania Wine, I just refer them to someone else.

I also get calls on large projects 20-30, even 100 acres. Again it's pretty easy to turn down. Stefania Wine is going to make small lots from specific vineyards until we have our own estate vineyard. Producing 20,000 cases is not what we are after.

Every now and then though a call comes in for a site and a situation that really makes sense, and we'll take on a new project. Usually just one new project a year and it fits in with what we are already doing.

I also get emergency calls sometimes, and I just love growing vines so much, that I can't say no. Last summer Stef and I went down to San Martin for some emergency consulting on a small family project that was struggling with over vigor and Powdery Mildew. We couldn't save the crop for them last year, but we got them back up on their feet, and they phone us now for help and guidance. I suspect they'll get a good crop of 2-3 barrels this year.

I got another call like that yesterday. A homeowner with a one acre Cabernet vineyard in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. He's got two year old vines and he doesn't know how to prune. I couldn't help myself. Not only is it almost too late to prune, but if he does it wrong this year, he'd be better off to rip out the vineyard and start over than try and correct the problem next year. It's a hard concept for most people, but with grape vines fixing a problem can take just as long as starting over, 2 or 3 years.

So we sent out a note to some close friends and put a little crew together for Saturday, and I hope we can save this little vineyard. It might not be one we keep long term, but I really think one successful vineyards in the hills is one less McMansion, and that's worth it.

The volunteer crew will get some home made Osso Bucco, and a lot of great wine as a reward too, and any excuse for a party ain't bad either.

Newsletters Out

Our first Newsletter, Spring 2007, just went out. We've been busy these past few weeks with so much office work it's been hard to believe. As I sit here now, Stef is printing out order forms, which will go out next week, and trying to make the label printer work.

Something easy to forget in this entire endeavor is that it is a small business. Books need to be kept, order forms printed, mail sent out, forms completed and 100's of other tasks that go with running any business. We joke a lot about being the 'Accounting Department' and 'Shipping Department' as we sit in the office at home.

This weekend though we'll be back out in the vineyards doing spring work, and Monday looks like we are set for bottling. It will be really nice to step away from the desk and get outside, or into the winery and smell the smells.

It's not all drudgery though, the nice part about being at home.... We just opened a bottle of wine to sip on while we work!

All the Details.

I can't imagine that the second release could be as hard as the first. As we're a week away now from sending out Allocation letters, almost every thing is done.

We're really hoping that this first time is the hardest, because it's been hard. Some big details we're still working on :The bank hasn't set up our Visa-Mastercard processing yet, we're really not 100% sure that the printer can handle 150+ color letters (we had to by a printer two weeks ago). I need to finish the newsletter, but really at this point those are small things.

There have been dozens of little details as well. It never occurred to me to send out confirmation emails for sign ups until a couple weeks ago, so I've just started doing that. I had to come up with a point system and I just did that this morning. At least I know a lot of these tasks will be one time deals.

Still it will be nice to get a few sunny days and get out in the vineyard and do some real wine work. The rain seems to be catching up, and I think we'll have bud break in a few weeks, and the focus can go from the office, to the vineyards.

Save the Date

April 21st, from 2pm-5pm.

Our Release Party! We'll be at Unwined http://www.unwinedshop.com/ to celebrate the official release of our 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah. Mail orders will start to go out the week before that, so you may get your wine before the 21st, but this will be our official party. We really wanted to have it close to home and the view from the front of the wine shop is very close to the view on our website and the one we'll likely use on our 2006 bottles.

The details are not finalized yet, check back at our site and the Unwined site as we get closer to the date. There will be snacks of cheese and small tapas. We'll also have our wine available to try by the glass plus 2-3 other wines we like to try as a 'flight'. We think the cost will be $10 or $20 per person and both we and Unwined will have tickets.

Unwined will also have a small amount of our wine to purchase that day at $35 a bottle. It's very likely to be the only retail sale available as it looks like the rest of the wine will be sold directly by mail order and go to a few select restaurants.

Bottling Date Set.

The question Stefania and I have heard more than any other is: "When will you have wine?". I think I even remember one of the neighbors asking that as we were digging holes in the yard to plant our first vines six years ago. Now there's a date. Monday February 26th we'll be bottling our 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah.

Everyone should be able to watch live by following the cam link at http://www.crushpadwine.com/index.php

We'll both be there through the day.

The wine will need to rest for a bit after bottling, then we should start sending it out in April and May. We'll have an official release in mid April and a party somewhere in San Jose to celebrate. More details coming soon!

Magnums

I've had a few questions asking if we are going to offer magnums or half (375ml) bottles.

We're not going to have half bottles this first year. It was price prohibitive to have them. With such a short production run, switching over the bottle line was going to add a big cost to half bottles and they would have ended up having to be priced at $25 or so. With 400+ case scheduled for the 2006 vintage though, we should be able to start offering half bottles next year.

Magnums were a little easier to do. Basically those are hand filled and hand corked, so the bottling line does not have to be stopped and switched over. We'll have six magnums total of each 2005 wine.

We're not going to offer those for sale. We'll keep a couple for ourselves and the other four will be given out as gifts. Right now I'm coming up with a 'rewards' point system. Something like Sea Smoke uses, giving their customers points for each purchase, length of time on the list and referrals. I'm also thinking that if people fax or email me receipts from restaurant or retail purchases, I'll include points for those purchases.

The four magnums will then be a gift to our best customers. It seems like a very small thing we can do to say thank you.

Can Yan Make Wine?

Recently I was talking with a friend about cooking. She wanted to know when I started to cook, and especially how did we get to be able to plate dinner for 15 people at a time. She said she can do four pretty easy, but even six is hard.

Well I started cooking when I was twelve. Mom started working late and my sister and I would cook before she got home. While my sister loved Mac and Cheese, I liked to try new things. I really got serious though after watch Martin Yan's, "Yan Can Cook" in the late 80's and early 90's. I went out and got his cookbooks and cooked through them.

That seemed an odd explanation to her, since I rarely cook Cantonese, or any Asian food for guests. But I told her I learned three important things from Martin Yan that helped me become a better cook.

First, he always stressed the importance of good fresh ingredients. Part of his show was always devoted to where you can find the best ingredients and how you can tell if they are fresh. He always stressed you could not make great dishes with out great ingredients, and that good ingredients would make up for any mistakes.

Second, Cantonese food is all about preparation. You have to have everything prepared and ready to go exactly when you need it. Since cooking happens so fast, you can't stop and chop some garlic in the middle if you forgot it. Everything has to be planned in advance. This has helped be able to get 15-20 plates with 3-4 things on it out together, hot, and ready to go.

Finally he taught about understanding how elements come together to create a dish. If you add carrots after onion, you'll end up with either underdone carrots, or burnt onion. You have to understand how each thing cooks, so you know when to add it to get the best flavors and textures. This taught me how important timing is in cooking and how to bring things together at just the right time.

And all this made me think of something that happened earlier that same day. We were at Crushpad, testing our wine and settling on bottling times. At the same time another person making wine was there. He was talking with one of the assistant winemakers about his 05 Cabernet and saying he wanted to get more structure in it.

I thought that was one of the oddest conversations I've heard. The 2005 Cabernet's are already 'cooked', we're just figuring out now when to 'plate' them. It's too late to add structure to a 15 month old wine.

If you wanted more structure you needed better ingredients, and you needed to have everything prepared to add structure to the wine at 'cooking' (pump overs, submerged caps, extended soaks, new oak), and finally you needed to understand when to apply these things to get the 'dish' right. It's to late now for new oak, or pumping over to have much if any effect.

So I thought what a great teacher Martin Yan is. Not only can he teach Asian cooking, but his teaching can be applied to plating 15 Rib Eyes with crusted veggies and cranberry salad. It also turns out it's pretty sound advice on how to make wine.

First Notes on the 2006's

Last night we drove over Hwy 17 in the rain to Felton to do the first real tasting of our 2006's. The wines have not finished Maloactic Fermentation yet, and need to be racked, so they are not really ready for tasting yet, but we wanted to get an idea where we are at so we could put a racking plan together.

2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Uvas Creek Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley - 5 barrels total + 20 gallons of topping wine, should make about 130 cases. Alcohol 14.6, aging in 40% new wood. (the wood wasn't really showing yet on any of these wines). Much darker color than last year, deep red with a similar nose as the 2005 at the same point, minty with lots of berry fruit, much fruitier than the 05. Already showing a savory finish, with good balance and length. We we're very happy with this.

2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Santa Cruz Mountains - 5 barrels total +10 gallons of topping wine, should make 125 cases. Alcohol 13.9, aging in 20% new oak. Darker than the Uvas Creek, almost purple, tons of black cherry and dark berry flavors and aromas, long and smooth and very plush. We all got the sense that this wine was really something special. This was a mix of Martin Ranch Cabernet with a little Merlot from Elandrich Vineyard. No one wanted to spit this wine.

2006 Syrah, Eaglepoint Ranch, Mendocino County - 5 barrels + 40 gallons on topping wine, should make 140 cases. Alcohol 14.8 Aging in @ 25% new oak (one new and one once used + 3 neutral) Red garnet color, with berries and mango. Very ripe tannins and sound acidity. This wine has been the slowest on Malo and we think that was what was giving it a tropical/berry nose right now. It was much more intense that the 05 at the same point.

John kept commenting on what a good job we did bringing in ripe, problem free, fruit. He said it was a real treat to work with all these fruit sources and watch the wines go with so little need for intervention. We'll be back every weekend for the next few weeks to check on barrels and get everything racked. I left very happy, I think all these wines are better at this point than the 2005's were at the same point last year.

A Really Big Night Out

Last night we had dinner at Olio in Campbell.

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/01.24.07/dining-0704.html

Thomas Ricci is the co-owner and chef, and I loved his cooking when he was at Arcadia in San Jose. He'd always make us something special, and ask how things were going with our wine. We visited Olio last week to see his new place, and he again asked how the wine was coming and when he'd get to try some. Last night we brought him in a barrel sample of the 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah, which will be bottled soon.

Thomas recommended the Lamb Shanks, which I ordered, and we sampled the wine with him and his bar manager Kevin.

Then we got our very first, official, ORDER.

We've had lots of people say they'll buy the wine when it comes out, but this was the first actual, money commitment. In late March, or early April, Stefania Wine will be on the wine list at Olio in downtown Campbell. Lots of people know the thing I've worried about most is selling wine. I don't think I'm a great salesman by any stretch, so this was a huge, huge deal! 49 more cases to go :)

Allocations, Pricing, and the Easy States.

We are just about ready to set up with a shipper, we'll have a final meeting with them this Monday. So, it's time to finalize up what we are going to do with prices and allocations. Our first release will be 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah. The letters should go out the end of February with shipping as weather permits starting in late March.

I think on pricing I'm set. A 3 pack will be $105, a 6 pack will be $200. Shipping will be billed directly by the shipping company, but I think I'll subsidize a little of the cost. It's not going to be cheap to ship these boxes, it looks like about $18 for a three pack and $25 for a six pack, and that's with me covering some of the costs. I wish I could offer single bottles or other combinations, but it's going to be too expensive to ship.

For allocations, everyone who has signed up so far will be allocated a 6 pack. They'll also be able to choose a 3 pack if they would like. That's a little risky for me. I'm counting on not everyone ordering wine so we're actually allocating more wine than we have. I'll give people the option to ask for more if we have enough left. People who sign up after today will be allocated a 3 pack.

I'm not set yet on pricing for the 2005 Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, it will be in the same range as the Syrah I think. Odds are pretty good that I'll have the same allocation for that when it's released in September, but it seems likely that anyone signing up after April or so won't be able to buy wine from us until next year's releases.

The states we'll be able to ship to are: Alaska, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon, Wyoming, Virginia, Colorado, Texas, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Florida, Washington

For other states I'll recommend a storage site. We're pretty excited about New York and New Jersey, we thought those would be tough and we have about 40 people signed up from those two states so far.

Cold Weather Worries?

The most common question I get this time of year is, "Will the cold weather hurt the grapevines?". The simple answer is "nope, not even a little."

Vines go dormant like apple trees or roses during the cold winter months. The sap pushes back down into the roots to stay warm and the wood hardens off to protect the tender part of the plant. Vines will go happily through the winter as long as the temperature doesn't drop below -15F, something that just never happens in California.

There's no real threat of damage to the plant until it begins to have bud break again. That's the point when a lot cold snap or frost can damage the tender new shoots. When the vine looks like this there's danger from cold:



We're still at least a few weeks away though from the plants pushing open. We also have the added protection in each of our mountain vineyards of being on a good slope. Cold air is heavy and it moves down the slope, this helps prevent frost from forming, so we don't really have any cold worries at all.

The lack of rain is a bit more bothersome. Unless we make up for the loss of rain in the months ahead it means we'll have to think about turning on the drip systems in our vineyards this spring and summer, more than we might do otherwise. It's a small change, and just means we have to be even more attentive to how the plants are doing.

St Vincent's Day

January 22nd is St. Vincent's Day. St Vincent was a 4th century martyer from Spain and his holiday was part of the merger of Roman holiday's into Christian ones in the 4th century, meaning he had a holiday named after him almost right after being killed.

St Vincent is the Patron Saint of vinegrowers and winemakers. The holiday and feast is celebrated in all of the Catholic wine growing areas of Europe, especially in Burgundy. The day begins with a morning mass, and the winemakers bring a bottle to leave at the alter. There is then a long feast that starts in the early afternoon and goes on late into the night. Everyone is expected to bring fine bottles to share with the other grapegrowers and winemakers at these feasts.

Before St Constintine merged the Roman religions with Christianity in the 4th century, the holiday was celebrated as Paganalia. Pagans were people who lived in the country and worked the land. The celebration started after the fields had been prepared for planting and the vines pruned, usually by the 3rd week of January. There was a huge feast, and people from the city would come and bring gifts and goods to the country people and wait on them at the parties, a kind of reversal of normal roles. Masks and costumes would sometimes be worn, so that no one could tell who was rich or poor.

A few weeks later the party would be reversed and the country people would head to the cities to bring gifts and wait on the city people. There was also costume wearing and great parades and dances. This holiday was called Fornicalia.

Paganalia became St Vincent's day, and Fornicalia is now celebrated as Carnival or Mardi Gras around the world.

More Shipping Fun.

Here's my experience with one of the six shipping companies I've evaluated so far.

First, someone always answers the phone there. It's the receptionist, she's not very helpful, but the phone has been picked up every time I call. She claims to take a message every time as well. So far 25% of my calls have been returned from them.

In addition I received an email response from them to one of four emails I sent.

That makes them far and away the most responsive of the six companies.

One company, I finally got through to a live person, I said, " I'm inquiring about opening a new account, I'm a small winery...ect.". She transferred me to someone's voicemail in ........ accounting. New account, accounting, hey it was close. A very nice lady in accounting did call me back and said, "sorry, I'm the wrong person, you'll get a call from so and so." So and so never called back.

They are in second place right now as the second most responsive.

In third place is a company, that I managed to get a call back from in December. This was after three phone calls and an email. They didn't want to fax me pricing, since they had new pricing coming out in two days. They promised me they'd fax the new pricing in two days (this was in mid-December), I've not heard from them since. Three more phone calls, two more emails, nothing.

If this is the level of service these companies provide, I'm afraid I'm in for a whole lot of headaches in the shipping area. Everyone's been telling me it's bad, and it's a headache, but I didn't think that the level of unresponsiveness could be this bad.

Another bad thing is it looks like I won't be offering single bottles. I really wanted to do that. Since we're a new winery I wanted to offer people the chance to taste and try a single bottle if they wanted. The pricing is just too much. It would be at least $17 to ship a single bottle from any of these companies. I had planned on eating some of the shipping costs, but at that rate it would still be $50-$55 a bottle to try a single bottle.

Pruning Update

We got off to a good start this weekend on pruning.

The weather was excellent, cold, but clear no rain or damp fog that can making pruning so difficult. Even the ground was ok, a little mud but not too much. Some years the combination of mud and grass gets so bad that we joke about "adobe boots". You have to stop every 15 minutes or so and work the mud off your boots to go on.

Saturday we got the entire Elandrich Vineyard done, all sections, about 2 acres total and still had time to get Kathy and Millie home done as well. The vineyard looked really nice, and it was especially nice to have no signs of Powdery Mildew, after fighting it so hard in 2004 and 2005. There is still one section of Cabernet that is lagging behind, but everything else looks great. We pruned mostly to a single bud per shoot. That's pretty severe pruning, most people leave 2-3 per shoot.

I like the dappled sunlight and better airflow though that this severe pruning allows. It also means I don't have to go through in August and drop a lot of fruit trying to get the rest to ripen. Or pull a lot of leafs off to let sunlight in. Basically I'm doing all that work now. This lets the vine naturally concentrates all it's energy on the fewer bunches. I end up with 1.5-2 tons per acre vs 4-5 tons per acre for most places and super concentrated fruit.

Sunday we finished most of the Llama Vineyard, just a few rows to go there this week. What a drastic change in this vineyard from the real mess we took over. Now all the vines have reestablished trunks and proper V.S.P. training. We should get our first good yield from this vineyard this year, even though it needs about 70 plants still replanted.

It was nice to have mother nature cooperating, we're off to a great start this year.

Full Moon's

A couple of years ago I started pruning after the first full moon in January. Before that I did it more or less randomly in January, when I could.

There was no real good reason for this. It was just traditional. People used to wait until after the first full moon in January to start pruning and they tried to finish by St Vincent's (The patron saint of winemakers and vinegrowers) day on January 22nd. Modern followers of the practice, including bio-dynamic farmers, believe that the moon's pull on the vines subsides after the full moon, and the plants will heal faster from the pruning and not loose as much 'energy' through sap bleeding.

I just figured "can't hurt".

I have seen better performance in my vines the last two years, but I've made so many other changes, who knows if the moon is having any effect at all. I remember Jerry Anderson telling me; "Farming is not science, it's trial and error, and you can never limit it to one variable". That's so true. I don't know what effect, if any, pruning on the moon phases has had, but I know it hasn't hurt, so I'll keep doing it.

We'll start on Saturday, and I'll work hard for the next couple of weekends to finish all the vineyards before St Vincent's Day. It also means 2007 is officially under way in the vineyard.

Shipping Problems Already?

Since we haven't bottled wine yet, it would seem impossible to have problems with our shipping company, but we have.

I picked out a small storage and shipping facility in the South Bay in April. I wanted somewhere local, that could deliver to restaurants in San Jose and ship to people as needed. They seemed to fit the bill well and we marked them off on our permits.

Well November came, and I wanted to sit down with them and make sure they'd be able to ship inter-state well, and could handle the wide spread of our customers. So I called, and emailed, and called and emailed, and nothing. I think they are still in business, but they never called me back. So I started checking around. There's one other shipper in San Jose I found, but they were geared for large volumes. The smallest price they had was to ship a case, and they could not even quote shipping single bottles.

So I started asking around. Kevin at Copain, Randy Sloan at Match Vineyards, and Bradley Brown at Big Basin all had recommendations I checked out. Some places never got back to me, or said they would send me information and never did, or just never responded to me. I figure some of that is the holiday season, so I'll contact them all again after the 1st. Still the experience has been something. Randy Sloan had a good quote: "I can't say I'm happy with my shipping company, but they are not pissing me off at the moment and that's about as good as it gets." Everyone else had simliar comments.

So I'll spend a lot of time in January it looks like tracking down a storage and shipping company and it will likely be in Napa. More time in a truck for me, I never thought winemaking would mean so much time behind the wheel.

Visit at Big Basin Vineyards.

A couple of weeks ago Bradley Brown, owner and winemaker at Big Basin Vineyards called me. Originally he was looking for some vineyard sources in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and wanted to know if I had fruit to sell in 2007 (I won't, I'll use it all). We ended up talking for over an hour on all kinds of subjects. Mostly we talked about fruit quality in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and our marketing efforts as two new wineries in the area. Bradley is just a few years ahead of us.

He invited me to come visit his facility and taste his barrels and wines. So, I managed to get some time last Friday and took the drive over to see him and his assistant winemaker Ian. I had a good idea of where to find him, since I've been to the golf course at Boulder Creek, and he was just past that. Still in the mountains you don't want to count on Google or Yahoo, so he left me detailed instructions.

He's built a beautiful little winery on his site, all out of redwood milled on the property. The space above the winery is a yoga studio. All the equipment is state of the art for such a small operation.

We tasted wines from 05 and 06 out of barrel and a bottle of 2004 Rattlesnake Ridge Syrah. Bradley has only made Syrah's so far and he and I both agree Syrah has a great future in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He also gave me a little sample of his first ever Pinot Noir from the 2006 vintage.

All his wines are plush, deep and full bodied Syrah's. Great dark fruit, with excellent complexity and depth. If you can I'd sign up now for his mailing list, as the secret is starting to get out and scores of 90+ are rolling in from Wine Spectator and Robert Parker.

We talked over our winemaking styles, techniques and preferences and we had a great deal in common with what we are trying to do. Bradley uses a bit more new oak than I do, about 50% vs 25% for my Syrah's but his fruit stands up to it very well. He's also not made any Cabernet, and asked me to bring some samples by when I can. Everything he and Ian do is well thought out, and no corners are cut in making great wine. It was a great experience to see another start up not cutting any corners and going top of the line in making wine.

We talked at length about what we might be able to do to help each other out, particularly with some marketing ideas on how we can get the word out on the new high quality wineries just coming on line in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and if some of the other new wineries might be interested in talking with us also. He was off to visit family for the holiday's but we agreed we'd meet again in January and see where we might take things together in the future.

Nope, it really is this slow.

I know it's been awhile since my last update, but there really is very little going on in the wine world right now.

In the winery everything is settled down in barrel and the 2006's are going through Maloactic. So there's no tasting and no fiddling with the wine. Just let it sit and finish it's work. The 2005's are also sitting. No more racking or changes for the Syrah until bottling in February. The Cabernet will go through one more racking in the late Spring.

In the vineyard, it's also sit and wait. I start pruning after the full moon in January, so no work on the vines for 4 more weeks. The ground has been to hard to do any work on trellis repair, but we did get some rain this week. That should soften things up enough to start work on fixing any hardware issues.

I do have a trip out on Friday to Big Basin Vineyards to report on, so the next update will be Friday or Saturday.

A Note on Allocations.

I've spent some time recently thinking about what we are going to do regarding allocations for our first few releases. It looks like we'll have more people who want wine than we'll be able to handle. Our very conservative business plan was to have 150 mail order customers by the end of 2007. I figured 1/2 of those would buy wine, an average of 6 bottles per year, or 3 bottles per release per buying customer.

It looks like we'll be way ahead of those numbers by April of 2007, much less December.

I'd like everyone who signs up before our planned April release of the 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah to be assured of getting a bottle. I also like the practice of Brian Loring at Loring Wine Company, and Randy Sloan at Match Vineyards of allowing customers to buy bottles in single quantities up to their allocation, so I'm going to do that for sure.

So I really think the limit is going to end up being four bottles per person. We'll give people the option of requesting more, and if we have the bottles, we'll get them out to those of you who have asked for 1/2 cases or even full cases.

We also will bottle six magnums of the 2005's. Two we are keeping for ourselves and we're planning on the other four bottles being thank you gifts for those of you who order your full allocation and request additional wine. It will be our way of thanking our first and best customers.

Thanksgiving Wine

Happy Thanksgiving.

I get asked often what wines go well with Thanksgiving Dinner. The anwer is 'none'. There really isn't any wine that pairs with the traditional rich and sweet Thanksgiving dinner. At least not in the classic way of pairing.

The holiday is also one where you're likely to have a lot of guests in the house who don't drink wine often. The complexities of an aged Burgundy are likely wasted, and Aunt Mildred isn't going to be impressed that you opened that $200 bottle.

So keep it simple is what I recommend, and open some crowd pleasers. Pull out wines with bold fruit and easy textures. Oaked Chardonnay's are a favorite of many, and if you can't bring yourself to buy a bottle, try opening a Viognier. The white wine drinkers will love the floral nose and sweet fruit. Avoid Sauvignon Blanc, it's spiky acidity is off putting to many who don't drink wine often.

For reds I always open a Zinfandel. For one it's the most American of wines. It also is full bodied and fruity, another crowd pleaser. Syrah or a Shiraz from Australia will have many of the same qualities. While many new style Pinot Noirs from California would fit, you should know what you are opening before hand. A bold wine from Sea Smoke would make everyone happy, but a Chambolle-Musigny like wine from Windy Oaks would puzzle many of your guests.

When the pies come out, bring out some sweet treat dessert wines or better still a nice Brandy.

Haut Tubee

Every year we host a harvest party in our backyard. The highlight is a grape stomp. I put out about 600 pounds of grapes in a 1/2 ton bin and let our friends go at them. Everyone has a lot of fun and we end up with a lot of juice.

A couple of years ago Stefania thought of the name "Haut Tubee" for the resulting wine. A take off on the hot tub in our backyard and a little play on one of her favorite wine La Mission Haut Brion.

This year we ended up with one full barrel of Haut Tubee. Besides the Cabernet grapes from the stomp I blended in a little of the wine from the house. Some Syrah, Grenache and a tiny bit of Mourvedre. It's all in barrel now at Chaine D'or with 1/2 barrel of Zinfandel that I just finished up today.

There's a pretty good chance I'll blend all of it together into what used to be called a Mistra Negro in California, a 'dark blend' or field blend of red grapes. Right now my plan is to give it away. We'll give some to everyone who came to the harvest party and stomped the wine, and we'll likely give some to people who order our first releases of wine as a thank you gift.

It tastes pretty good at this point, and doesn't have even smell at all like feet.

Enjoying a Glass of Wine.

A couple of weeks ago I had a few visitors in from Florida who wanted to barrel taste our 2005 wines. Things where a little crazy at Crushpad and I ended up setting up a little serving area out on the loading dock, on top of a one ton bin. We tasted through each wine and each barrel treatment and did a blend of barrels to get a final assesment.

Stefania couldn't join me so she asked if I could bring a little wine home for her to try. I ended up with about 1/4 bottle of both the Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and the Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon left over.

We sampled a small glass of each when she got home from work, and then put the bottles aside to make dinner. Later that night I poured a glass of each as we went to bed and took them into the bedroom to enjoy as we watched the late hockey game.

It was the first time I've actually gotten to drink our wine. Every other occasion has been a 'tasting' either a rather stressful technical assesment at the winery, or walking visitors through the wines. In that atmosphere I'm more concerned about what is going on technically with the wine and make choices on what to do. It's been an intellectual exercise, not a pleasurable one.

So sitting in bed that night I was really amazed. The wines are damn good. I couldn't get enough of the Cabernet. It was savory, and well balanced with a great texture and nice Cab fruit. I kept going back to it until the glass was drained.

It was a totally different experience. Just getting out of the cramped noisy conditions at Crushpad and having the time to really savor the wine and enjoy it was fantastic. Both just tasted damn good.

Lots and lots of pictures

Finally had a chance to get through all the seasons pictures. It's been so busy, but I got them organized finally. There are too many to share here, or on the website at http://www.stefaniawine.com/, so I've used bubbleshare.






Pressing "Haut Tubee"

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85803/overview








Harvest Party!!!!

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85812/overview










Moving Barrels

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85802/overview








Chanine D' Or Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85797/overview






Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85804/overview






Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85818/overview

Pictures are on the Way.

We really did take a lot of harvest pictures this year. Maybe too many in fact.

Instead of posting them all here or at www.stefaniawine.com I'm going to put a bubbleshare page together and provide a link. That should be done by tomorrow night.

I'll be back blogging every 2-3 days as well. We took a few days off this weekend to recover and relax but I'll be back at it now.

Finishing up in the Fields

Saturday we had a rough day at Chaine D'Or. There were supposed to be 10 pickers, and only four showed up, then two left early to go install a lawn! That left us with just two people to pick. Stefania and her friend Kathy came up and helped finish the last rows and Jerry and slowed crushing down enough to get out and help pick also.

It lead to a very tiring day, probably the most tired I've been yet making wine.

We had a nice birthday dinner with friends Saturday night at Alexander's in Cupertino and enjoyed a few great wines: 1998 Grand Mayne, 1999 Leoville Barton, 1997 Caymus Special Selection and the highlight a 1996 Latour.

Daylight savings on Sunday was a nice break, and extra hour of sleep before heading out to harvest Zinfandel and remove the last of the brid netting. We had had to leave the netting on the Merlot the week before to get to the winery in time, so we took that off as well.

We took the Zin up to Chaine D'Or to make there and cleaned up the equipment from a busy weekend.

Kathy, Millie, Yukari and Bill all came over on Sunday afternoon to watch the Sharks play, and Stef made a traditional dish from Chile. We had a few more nice bottles, a 98 CdP, a VGRoth Cab from the 80's and some Syrah's I pulled out before finishing the evening with a little scotch and some noice cigars. Sounds like a late night, but I was asleep by 7:45!

Update on the New Wines

2006 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah - Mendocino County

Went into barrel today. Really good dark color and showing a good nose. I used two different yeasts this year, both that bring out more floral smells, and it looks like it took in bin. It looks like we'll be about 14% alcohol with good sound acidity again like 2005. I filled 5 full barrels, one new French Oak, two two+ year old French Oak, one once filled American Oak, and one twice filled American Oak. That should work out to about the equal of 25% new oak that worked so well in the 2005. We also have 32 gallons of toping wine or about 1/2 barrel. That should be about 130 cases of finished wine.

2006 Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon - Santa Clara County.

This looks like a rock star so far. I changed up yeasts here too and went for a more open nose. It went into bin at 24.5 BRIX and 3.65 PH. That's exactly perfect for me and should end up about 13.5% alcohol. The color is very dark this year. I didn't do a cold soak this year, I thought that lead to color issues last year. It has an amazing fruit nose right now for a wine half way through fermentation. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, this may be the best wine we've made so far. I think we'll be at 5 full barrels and I'm planning on two new French Oak, 1 one year old American Oak, and 2 two year old American Oak. Pretty heavy Oak, but I think this wine will handle it this year.

2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon (with 5% Merlot)

Typical for the Santa Cruz Mountains this year this came in with sound BRIX (25.1) but low acidity (PH 4.0). We're having to correct the acidity as it ferments, that's just to low for what we are after. It's got a SCM nose right now, a mix of fruit and minty flavors. The challenge now is to get the acidty fixed and lock in the color. It was slow to start, almost 24 hours more than the Uvas Creek to start fermenting. We'll watch this like a hawk. It's got all the stuff to make a great wine, but we'll have to stay on top of it. The Eaglepoint and Uvas Creek are making themselves, but this one will require sound winemaking. This will get about 1/3 new wood I think.

We still have Zinfandel to go. I'm hoping we get enough fruit for a full barrel, and will pick that Sunday and make it at Chaine D' Or.

Adventures in Truck Driving

I really hoped to have more updates as we harvested, but the reality of 12-15 hour days set in quickly. I fell asleep at a friends house Saturday night watching the Sharks game with a glass of Port in my hand.

In all I think we put 700 miles on rental trucks and probably another 500 on our own cars these past two weeks. As I was driving over Highway 17 Friday, I started to think about Stefania's late father, Lt. Cl. Fred Von Gortler. He was a career Army officer, and I thought about something they teach at the War College. The saying is "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, professionals talk about logistics."

Last year I said the key thing I learned for the season was how important leadership and a chain of command is in a winery. This year my leason was: "It's all about logistics."

Basically you make your wine making plans well in advance. I keep my options open though, and make choices based on the fruit as it comes in and we start to work with it. It all comes down to logistics though. You have to have everything in place, and move everything around effectively to make your choices happen. If the fruit is low in BRIX, you need to have the lower BRIX yeast at the winery already. You think the fruit needs destemming after tasting the stems, you better have the destemmer clear. You want the best fruit in the state, you better know how to drive a truck.

These harvest weeks really come down to how effectively you can manage the logistics of moving fruit around. I think that was really clear to me on Saturday as I worked with Bill and Ted at Uvas Creek to load the truck, and a couple of homewinemakers stood by. They wanted to talk about what yeast I would use, if I'd cold soak, what kind of barrels I had, and all the little details. I didn't have time to shoot the breeze, all those options where already planned for, I just needed to move the fruit and make it happen, I had to get on the scales by noon.

Amateurs talk yeast and cold soaks , professionals talk trucks and bins. That's the key thing I learned this year.

A Busy Harvest Weekend

Just a fast note on where we are at:

Friday -
7:30 AM pick up a 15 foot truck
9:00 AM arrive at Martin Ranch to pick our 1 1/2 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon
Noon: arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:30 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
1:00 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:30 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM load the truck and drive back to Uvas Creek
5:30 PM arrive at Uvas Creek and drop of the bins
7:00 PM arrive home - a twelve hour day

Saturday

Up at 4:00 AM
4:30 AM load up the FLPB (mine are Purple not Yellow) and drive to Portola Valley
5:30 AM begin removing bird netting
6:30 AM start picking and loading Merlot at Elandrich in Portola Valley
8:00 AM finish pick and drive to Uvas Creek
9:30 AM load up our two tons of Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon
11:30AM arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:00 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
12:30 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:00 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet and Merlot
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM press the Eaglepoint Syrah and get it into the settlement bins
6:00 PM head home
7:00 PM arrive home- fifteen hour day

Wish us luck!

A Great Post Party Note

Right in the middle of harvest season, we like to take a little break, and invite all our friends over to celebrate harvest. We make some harvest season treats, and I put some grapes in the backyard for everyone to stomp, and we open 30 or 40 bottles of wine.

This year we had a full house at 40 people. Just about the maximum we figure we can fit. This morning Stefania got a thank you note from one of her friends and co-workers:

"I just wanted to say thank you for the invite...we had a preconceived notion that since we were not 'Wine People' we would feel uncomfortable and to put it harshly shunned by the other so called 'Wine People'.... What we found out the moment we walked through the door was SO the opposite of what our stupid inclinations were (I don't even know what 'Wine People' are anymore). You and Paul are the most gracious hosts and everyone made us feel so welcomed. I can't even remember the last time I went to a party where I knew virtually no one and felt so comfortable, where people you do not even know come up to you and say 'Hi I am such and such' and just start talking to you as if you mattered, not caring that we knew nothing about wine and very willing to share their knowledge or experience. "

That was the best note. One goal we have is to make wine easy and enjoyable for people. We want to put aside all the anxiety and let people just enjoy a bottle with new friends or connect with old friends. "Good wine, good food, good parties and great friends!" as Stefania says. Friends are the key that makes the party, the food, or the wine truly great.

We're headed out tomorrow to drop off bins and get back to winemaking!

Update on Eaglepoint Ranch and some notes on the 05's.

Well we made it back!

What an adventure in truck driving. 5+ hours up to Mendocino County, with the last 5 miles (including 1.5 miles of dirt) on a step mountain road. We picked on the morning of 10/11 before the Sun came up. Four full bins of fantastic Syrah. We had planned on just 3 bins, but I took the fourth just in case Casey at Eaglepoint would let us take more and he did.

The picking crew was excellent and they left any problem grapes on the vine. We loaded back up and drove back to Felton. 6+ hours through 7 counties, across the Golden Gate, through San Francisco, all the way to Santa Cruz to get on a public scale. The grapes went into the crusher with just a minor issue (the forklift got stuck in the field and had to be pulled out). Fantastic fruit, even the crew at the crusher said it looked great.

We 100% destemmed but did not crush the berries, and it went into 3 one ton bins to ferment. I'm using two different yeast this year to see what might work best on this fruit.

The 100% destemming was a hot topic at dinner Tuesday night with Casey and Larry Roberts, a winemaker from Paso Robles. Almost everyone making Eaglepoint Syrah follows Sean Thackery who uses 100% stems, or Wells Guthrie (Copain) who uses 60% stems. I guess I'll just stand out. I love the pure fruit and floral nose our wine developed in 05 without stems, so We'll be the mavericks who will go total destem with Eaglepoint. I think the fruit has good enough tannin and complexity on its own.

We finally got home at 9:45 PM on the 11th, and returned the truck yesterday. Today I'm off to Bonny Doon and Elandrich to check on the grapes, then Uvas Creek to drop off a Bin for 1000 pounds of Cabernet we're getting tomorrow.

And oh yeah some tasting notes have been put up on our 2005's:

http://www.vinocellar.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=376274&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

http://winodepot.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=6803

Getting Ready to Go

After we're done lounging with some coffee this morning, we'll be off to clean our bins and get them ready for harvest tomorrow. Then we swing by the truck rental place and pick up a 14 foot box truck to drive to Mendocino. We should get to Eaglepoint Ranch about 5 PM today.

We'll unload the bins and settle down for a little wine and food with the folks at Eaglepoint and then get to bed early. We're staying at the Ranch tonight. We'll get up before dawn tomorrow as harvest starts. Once our bins are full, we load back into the truck and take the 5+ hour drive back to Felton and Hallcrest.

We should arrive about noon. We'll crush right away and the must will go into T-bins to start turning into wine. The process should go fast and we're hoping that by 6 or 7 PM we will be able to call it a day.

Stefania will take lots of pictures and we'll post them here and to our website as soon as possible.

And we're off........

A few frantic phone calls to Hallcrest and Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch and we're ready!

Tuesday we'll rent a truck and head up to Eaglepoint Ranch. Casey is going to let us pick our rows out Tuesday afternoon. We'll stay the night at the ranch and then pick the next morning! Then a drive down 101 to Hallcrest, and John is ready for us. Our first fruit will go into bins this week.

I still have to confirm the truck, and wash the bins but we'll get that done tomorrow. I'll also call Casey and offer to cook rib eyes for everyone Tuesday night at the ranch.

We'll take lots of pictures! Finally, we're off and running!

Here Comes the Sun Again!

After days of cloudy drippy wet weather, we woke up this morning to Sun! The outlook now is for sunny weather and warming over the next two weeks. The tequila worked!

The forecast could not be better. So after a hard week of waiting and hoping, we're ready to go again. Everything has been pushed back by a week or so it seems. Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch is going to call me today with numbers and set up a picking date.

Uvas Creek sent me numbers on Friday, and that looks like it will be picked the week of the 15th.

I'm pretty excited by what we're seeing. Sugars are not to high, and acidity is really good. These should be great grapes to make the kind of wine we really want to make. Updates should start to come fast now.

Sharks and Wine

It might seem odd that we list a small get together on Thursday night at our house as a wine event. It was opening night hockey for the San Jose Sharks.

For us it has a very real wine tie in. We had been season ticket holders for the Sharks for many years. We had even worked our way down to the 7th row. Two years ago though we had a tough choice to make. The season tickets are about the same price as the fee we pay the facility we make wine at. So it was Sharks or make wine. We made wine.

We've had to make a lot of financial sacrifices along the way. We didn't get into making wine as a vanity project like so many people, or a way to waste dot-com millions (we didn't have any to waste), it's been a tightly budgeted project all along.

We've known the risk in that. A big factor in the failure of most new wine projects is being under funded. So we put a tight business plan together. Slow controlled growth, cost containments, limit risks, generate cash flow early, lots of planning to get by on a small budget and focus every dollar on the wine.

For a night it was nice to push that aside though and have some good Pizza and watch the Sharks win in overtime. I miss the games, but it sure would be sweet to toast a Stanley Cup with some Stefania Wine, even if we can't be at the game.

Gin for the gods of Rain.

Yesterday Adam Lee from Suduri/Novy wines posted something he'd heard
form Pinot Noir grower Martin Van der Kamp:

There is an Native American tradtion that the God that brings rain also likes to drink gin. So to delay a rain you leave 1 shot of gin outside and the God then either becomes drunk or certainly distracted enough that the rain is delayed. We will be putting a shot of gin outside the winery tonight and would appreciate it if all of you could do the same at your homes as well. "

We put a shot of gin outside last night as well, and I've heard Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch did too.

Right now we just wait and hope the coming rain is light and doesn't slow down the grapes too much. The forecast is for dry weather in the 70's after the storm goes through, so all in all the rain may just push back harvest 3-5 days.

Kenneth posted a review and some pictures from the barrel tasting on Saturday. Take a look at:

http://www.kenneths.org/flog/food_and_drink/paulwine.html

And put some gin out if you have it!

Harvest at Chaine d Or

We met Anne Anderson of Chaine d Or http://www.chainedor.com/ a few years ago at a tasting event at Copia in Napa, and followed that up with a picnic at the winery last summer. Jerry and Anne took a liking to us and offered lots of great advice as we started our winery.

Last fall Jerry invited me to help with harvest. No small deal, Jerry had turned down all offers of help for over 10 years he let me know. I think our enthusiasm and dirty boots though convinced Jerry and Anne we were serious so I helped with both the Chardonnay harvest, and the Cabernet harvest.

Jerry asked me to help again this year, and Saturday morning I headed out before dawn to get to the small vineyard high in the Santa Cruz Mountains.





This was my view from on top of the crusher. Our Elandrich vineyard is on the lower left, and Ridge's Monte Bello vineyard is the cloud covered peak on the right.







I'm in charge of the "crush pad". The grapes arrive and I lift them into the crusher destemmer. Jerry puts the crusher in the truck bed so that we can use gravity to feed the crushed and destemmed grapes into the wine press. The juice collects in the bin below the press and I then pump it into the large tank in the back to settle.











You can see the pump on the right, and the cellar doors in this photo. I use the wheel barrow to haul away the discarded stems.









Jerry on his tractor far down the row. The picking crew loads the tractor and Jerry brings the bins up to me at the crush pad.










Chardonnay grapes fresh in the bin. In the wine business these are called. F.L.Y.B.'s Short for F..ing little yellow bins. They are harder to work with than 1/2 ton bins because each one has to be lifted into the crusher (by me in this case) rather than using a forklift. They hold 30 pounds.






Another task I do is run up and down the rows and push all the FLYB's into a row. The pickers leave them on the ground when they are full. I then go line them up like this so Jerry can load them onto the tractor by passing down a single row.






4 bins are loaded on the front. I do that. Two pickers then load the back up with 20-25 bins, and Jerry then drives them up to me at the crush pad. One of the crew lifts them to me, and I lift them into the crusher. I quickly remove any leafs or bad clusters before they get crushed.




I had to leave for a little bit at 9 am, but we were mostly done by then. I got back in time to press the juice and finish getting it into tank. Jerry lets it settle for 24 hours before he transfers it into barrels for fermentation. The last task of the day was getting the crusher off the truck. No easy task for sure.

We finished the day cleaning up and Jerry asked me how our harvest schedule looked. I let him know that we were likely going to make the Elandrich Zinfandel at home because there was not enough to make at Hallcrest. Hallcrest has a one ton minimum and we will only have about 1000 pounds of Zinfandel.

He very kindly offered to let us make the Zinfandel at Chaine d Or. So we will have a single barrel (25 cases) of 2006 Elandrich Santa Cruz Mountain Zinfandel from Stefania Wine after all.