The Haut Tube Goes Mainstream (Part 4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2007 Haut Tubee barrels after bottling.



Next Up - The Haut Tubee Gets a Plan

The Haut Tubee Gets a Name (Part 3)

"Is this crap any good?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleaning up after a pick of the Haut Tubee Vineyard



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

The Haut Tubee Finds a Home (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early Haut Tubee experiments in our home kitchen:





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

History of the Haut Tubee (Part 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up- The 2006 finds a home.

Allocations

I never have any fun trying to figure out what amount of wine to offer people. It's a hard process and I always wish I had more wine to offer. I start the process by sorting everyone on the mailing list by points, highest to lowest. The higher the points, the higher the allocation.

Next I make breaks into groups based on how many people fall into a group. Then I assign an allocation amount to each group. It's pretty straight forward but the amounts are always a bit of a guess.

I'm pretty sure this time we will sell out of everything pretty quickly and the only wine available to some people will be to reorder some of the 2007's we still have available. The really hard part is I don't want to have anyone who ordered wine last time, to not get it this time.

Stefania and I will have to work something out so the order form is not to confusing and maybe get creative with some sampler packs. I'm sure we'll also want to have some way for people to request more wine than they have been allocated so that on the chance we have some left we can get that to people who want it.

Upcoming Release

We've started to get some email about the timing of our next release. We've picked a date and it will be September 15th. Shipping will start in November.

I listed the new wines we will have available back in June

We will also have a few 2007 wines that we will be re-offering. We are going to have to go back to doing letters in waves like we did in the past. We will probably do three waves, starting on the 15th, then the 22nd and finally the 6th of October. The first wave will go to people with more than 1000 points. The next wave will go to people with less than 1000 points and new people who have signed up since the last release. The last wave will go to people who have signed up in the past but have not made a purchase.

It seems very likely that we will sell out of Syrah and Haut Tubee in the first or second wave of letters. I'd bet in fact the Haut Tubee is gone in the first round, with an 80% chance the Syrah will go as well before second wave letters go out. I think the Pinot Noir will last a little longer because it's more expensive, but I'm betting there's a 50% chance it too is gone after second wave letters.

I guess that means we're back to having a waiting list at least for some wines.

American Express

Thanks to Todd D. from California. He finally inspired us to jump through all the hoops we needed to jump through to add American Express to the list of credit cards we can take.


Some how in the transaction we also can now take Discover cards as well. I'm not sure yet if our mobile application will work with American Express, but for all other orders we are finally able to also accept American Express!

Updating on Pruning the Haut Tubee

Back in January I wrote a detailed blog about pruning the vines in the backyard:

Pruning the Haut Tubee

I've been meaning to get an update together to show the results of the pruning and supply the 'why' to what we did.

This is the before on one of the vines that I described as a part three year old part four year old vine.

This is the same vine today with fruit hanging in what is called the fruit zone and the shoots going up into the trellis system.


This us the entire vine and some charcoal for the smoker in front of the hot tub. The green growth has created a curtain of leafs with the fruit hanging below.


This was a head trained vine that we were trying to retrain into a Cordon and Spur VSP trained vine.


This is the same vine with new cordons established. There's a little less fruit on this vine at this stage. Next year with the retraining complete, it will look like the vine above.



Changing the training on a vine is tricky and requires a lot of experience and understanding of how a vine grows. If you have that though the results can be great.

Vegas Baby!!!!!!!!!

The world has strange karma.

It wasn't more than 24 hours after I published this rant about public wine events and compared them to rock concerts that Colleen from Rock and Roll Wine invited us to their big event of the year - Wine Amplified.

We attended one RnR Wine event before and really had a great time. They've invited us back a few other times but we just could not fit it in our schedule. With harvest looking like it's running late this year though, the last weekend in September opened up for us. Part of why I really like this event is that Chris Hammond, the promoter, does treat the wineries like we're an attraction. He only asks that we bring enough wine to be able to pour through the event, no fees. He puts together great shows, great venues and does an awesome job.

The wine industry is struggling so hard to figure out how to market to people under 35. People in the industry ask me a lot on my ideas and how we've been successful at it and my answer is always the same: "You should talk to Chris Hammond, he's the freaking genius of wine marketing to people under 35."

I also really enjoy working with Colleen La Prade. She handles all the winery coordination and is about 50 times more organzied and professional than any other organizer we've ever worked with. "Colleen I need someone to ship too, Colleen can I get help pouring, Colleen we need a room?" - The answer is always either, "No problem I've already got that set up , or give me 24 hours and I'll get that set up".

The headline act this year is Third Eye Blind and the concert will be on the beach at Mandalay Bay. We will be in the main beach area pouring, and Colleen has set up some help for us so we can visit more with people at the table. There are special room rates at Mandalay Bay and the Luxor.

Please let us know if you're coming! It will be a great party!

Monkey Butt Cuvee or Meritage

Paul has been bantering online about the value of using the term Meritage on a label. He came up with Monkey Butt Cuvee as an alternative and we had a few good laughs over it.

At least Monkey Butt can be pronounced and there is no wondering what it means. It's not a great example, but what does Meritage mean?

Nevermind what it means, if you don't know, it's not a big deal and you are not alone. I don't like it for one reason and one reason only, it alienates a good portion of the wine-buying population and makes wine that much scarier to the uninitiated.

Wine is a beautiful accompaniment to food, on it's own, for every day consumption, or for special occasions. You can make it a big deal or it can be casual. You can buy all the accessories, the fancy stemware, sexy openers, and blown glass decanters, or you can unscrew the top of your favorite bottle and pour it into just about any vessel to imbibe.

Whatever you choose, the one thing that wine should not do is confound, confuse, or intimidate you. It is my opinion that the word Meritage does those things.

The most valuable lesson I learned in a public speaking course was "know your audience" and so I'm not going to overly criticize those wineries that use Meritage on their labels, because they are speaking to their audience.

At Stefania Wine, we will not label any of our red blends as Meritage, but do watch for a version of Haut Tubee Monkey Butt Cuvee, or maybe MBC since I bet TTB has a field day with "Butt" on the label...

On The Road Again -Well on the Bike Anyways

I love that song. Every road trip we ever takes starts out with me humming it.

We're just about eight weeks away from harvest starting for us. It's time to open training camp. That's how I'm going to think of it anyway. I actually wrote a blog about 49ers training camps when I was growing up. The 49ers start training camp next week so it seems like a good parallel for Harvest Training Camp.

We had done pretty good through the spring and early summer with staying up on the gym. July we took a lazy break of about three weeks. I'm not sure how lazy it actually was, we had vineyard work and winery work during that time, but we hadn't visited the gym in 3 weeks.

Starting this past Monday though I was back on the exercise bike. My plan is to ride it every day until September 8th. Just taking off Sunday each week. Not long rides, just 30 -60 minutes each day. We've started up the hike schedule as well and are trying to get in 2-3 a week.

The goal is to build up the endurance we'll need for harvest. I've been focusing on heart rate while I'm on the bike and trying to keep it at 120-125. Leg strength and stamina is really what gets you through harvest so the bike and hiking are perfect.

Usually its not a good idea to exercise every day. The body really does better with some days off to recover, but I think this training camp approach. like the NFL uses, should work well. We start traveling on September 8th, about the same time NFL teams will get out of their training routine and into regular season routines. We will do the same. We'll cut back on gyms and hikes then and use our energy for harvest days. The rest will be in between those busy days and we'll only hike or gym when we see stretches longer than 3-4 days between the busy harvest days.

My hope is that I personally come out a little less tired in November than I did last year. We made it through the harvest great, and I never felt worn out, but by late November we were worn down. I hope this approach, planning on building continual endurance, then planning on rest periods during harvest, will mean less fatigue at the very end.

About Pauls Rants

I'm under the sneaking suspicion that Paul thinks if he mentions Salma Hayek enough times in his blog that she might actually show up! I'm his wife, I'm supposed to support those dreams and fantasies right? Well, I humor him anyway... (wink, wink)

Anyway, to continue the rant somewhat, the other day on our way to the antique show in Moss Landing, we passed a church that was advertising for an upcoming arts and craft fair. It was $25 for the artists to set up a table at the event. I thought, this is what Paul is complaining about. The artist/crafter at least has the potential to make $25 in sales to cover the cost of the table while he/she is at the event. It's not guaranteed, but at least they can sell their wares at the table.

The best we can do at a wine event is hope we sell wine to a future customer because you are most definitely not allowed to sell at the event. No no no. Sure people sign up for the mailing list, cards are exchanged, hands are shaken, but most people coming by are there for the fun of the event, not the opportunity to buy or obtain wine they'll never see on the supermarket shelf.

I'm not sure what else to add to that - it's not a fully formed thought, maybe that's all I have.

This morning while getting coffee at Espresso City, the owner asked if we would like to host a tasting on his patio one night after work. Heck yes! But...I need to call ABC and find out how to get him a temporary alcohol license, otherwise, no go.

Tomorrow night we are pouring at non-profit event and donating our time and wine to a cause we both support personally. The winery gets the write-off but that's not the point of attending. We are there to support our community - and if we're lucky, Salma Hayek will come by and say hello...

Sabor Del Valle - July 29th

We've been invited to pour at Sabor Del Valle in San Jose - check out the flyer and follow the link at the bottom if you're interested in attending. Paul and I have been actively following the Latino Art Community so this is a great opportunity for us to participate locally and share our art too.


http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e2wuweb0aab20bb3

Just Stuff

I took Friday off. Actually, I took the entire weekend off now that I think about it. And it felt gooood.

Friends of friends were visiting from Virginia so we piled into two cars and drove over to the coast. After goofing off trying to fly a kite at Gazos Creek beach access, we drove up to Pescadero and had lunch at Duartes. Best crab sandwich in over 20 years. Just sayin'.

Visited the Harley Goat Farm and treated myself to some homemade soaps, 4 different cheeses, brown eggs, and wildflower honey. I didn't think that anything could top the crab sandwich, but this was by far the highlight of of the weekend. I'm a Capricorn, and love goats...go figure.

On Saturday, we confirmed our participation at the Las Vegas Rock N Roll wine event for September. I'll have more info. on that soon. If you're interested, it's Saturday the 25th at Mandalay Bay. Rock On!

Sunday we got stuck in traffic on our way to Moss Landing for the Antique Show...it was on the list of things I'd like to do, but after staying out late Friday AND Saturday night (oooh), I was in no mood to wake up early just to look at old stuff. It wasn't too cold, damp, or foggy but it was cold, damp and foggy. Found some small Bauer pieces I almost bought, but nothing that stood out that I just had to have. Maybe next time.

I'm stupefied that July is wrapping up already...is summer ever going to get here? I know the folks back east are sweltering, but someone needs to turn off the a/c out here already.

Veraison & Poppies

More poppies keep popping up! This is Paul's favorite flower, so when I see them coming up I make sure to point them out to him. It's the simple things in life, yes? Keeps him from ranting too much...

Also in the vineyard, veraison! I need to look back through the vineyard notebooks to be sure, but I think we're about two weeks behind "normal" for our estate vineyard here in San Jose.

Is It Too Soon to Rant Again?

I asked Stefania that via email at lunch today. She said just "as long as you alternate the rants and don't bash the industry too much".

I had this posting in mind:

http://stefaniawine.blogspot.com/2010/04/public-events.html

It explained why we won't do public tasting events any more. Since that posting we've been invited to about a dozen public events. I think it's time to modify our policy some. We will only do public events that do not charge the winery to attend. Of course that's like saying we'll only give away free wine to people named Salma Hayek who stop by our house. We're pretty sure Selma is not dieing to stop by, and a public wine event that doesn't charge the wineries is about as rare as having a Hollywood starlet come by for a visit.

I was thinking about that reading the Rolling Stone last night. Which by the way the Rolling Stone has the very best political and foreign affairs writing in the country today. Even if you don't like the political views, no other publication comes close to the depth and impact of the reporting going on at the Stone. Anyway, back to the main rant, there was a column on all the summer rock festivals.

It got me thinking. Do they charge the rock bands to play at those events? Do the promoters tell the bands: "We've got a huge audience of your target market lined up to come, just give us $10000 and we'll charge them $50 each and let you play for them"?

The wine is the attraction at a wine tasting isn't it? If you had a wine tasting with no wine, would anyone attend? It just seems we've been doing it backwards in the wine industry for a long time.

Pork Emergency!

A couple of years ago Stefania and I were shopping early one Saturday morning at our local market. They had a special on pork butt. I think it was 99 cents a pound.

I stood in the market for a long time wondering what to do. This same market will have prime rib on sale from time to time at $7-$8 a pound. Once they even hit $5 a pound. That's an easy buy. A prime rib I can cut up. I can make steaks or I can cut it into smaller roasts and freeze it for later. Pork butt though really should not be cut up. It's best cooked long, slow and whole. Our freezer is small, and mostly used for cocktail equipment, so freezing a pork butt isn't really a good idea.

What to do, I wondered? "Pork Emergency, Pork Emergency"!! That's what we did. We bought it and sent out a message to a few friends - "Pork emergency, come help us eat this thing."

Well it happened again on Saturday. The market had good looking butts and St Louis Style ribs at 2 for 1. It was time for a Pork Emergency.

Sunday morning Stefania and I broke up an old barrel to use for smoke and we put the pork on about 9AM. This was at about 1PM when I took the ribs off the smoke.


I like to let ribs stay on the smoker for about 4 hours, then remove them and finish them on the grill. I find the fat does not render down to my liking on the smoker alone. I do the same with pork butt, but don't feel like I've got in down 100% yet. I did 6 hours on the smoker, then three in the oven at higher temperature. I would have liked to get the fat rendered down a bit more. Maybe next time I'll do it Carnitas style and return the meat to the oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes after chopping it up to get it slightly crispy.

In the mean time, watch your emails and texts for the next Pork Emergency!


Seems like we drank more wine than that...or we're starting to slow down a bit. :-)

Cooking with Okra, what no wine??

All I know about cooking with fresh okra is that it can be weird and there are techniques used to avoid it getting gummy.

I didn't bother to research it further and followed my instinct last night. Maybe it was the gin martini talking (Hendricks with a slice of cucumber)

In a hot skillet I browned chicken pieces, added garlic, onion, fennel, and red bell peppers.
When it got too hot and sizzly, I poured a little white wine into the pan and gave it a toss.
Added sliced shiitake mushrooms and sliced okra then poured a lemongrass/soy mixture over everything and covered it. Walked away for 30 minutes while it burbled on medium low heat.

Shared the last half of a bottle of sake with Paul...(previously opened)

Added fresh snow peas and raw bok choy, covered and let steam/burble another 15 minutes.

When the snow peas and bok choy got added, Paul started a pot of asian noodles.

I don't know if it was because the okra was super fresh or because I sliced it lengthwise and let it mostly steam, but it was perfect.

We shared this feast in front of the t.v. while watching a past episode of Anthony Bourdain shooting guns in Texas with Ted Nugent. A classic episode and one I like to quote often.

Bad Grapes Gone Wild

Last night Stefania and I were back in Morgan Hill for a dinner meeting at a local pub down there. As we parked Stefania spotted these growing on the fence that divides the property lines. Unlike the bright healthy plants from our bike ride, these were withered and browning from powdery mildew.

This is an advanced stage of the disease. The white powder of the early stages has turned brown and dirty. The leafs have started to curl and die. Growth is stunting the plant and the mildew has spread to the grapes.

The berries are underdeveloped and will not get ripe. You can see the leafs starting to curl here, the first step in their death. The plant will survive through next year and onwards after that, but it will not produce any ripe fruit. The berries you see here will turn brown in a few months and fall off.

We had started the evening though with a more hopeful sight. We visited the Sesson vineyard in Coyote Valley. Jerry had spent the day tieing down new cordons and we were checking on his progress. The vineyard needs another mowing, but it seems to be fully recovered from the training mishap of last year and should produce some fruit next year.

The Plan

I know most wineries, and almost all small businesses start off without a written business plan. Truth is our initial plan consisted of a lot of excel spreadsheets, a business plan template with my hand written modifications scribbled in and my memory. I had it all pulled together in a small blue binder. To anyone but me and Stefania it probably looked like a scrapbook.


We knew enough though to break the plan out into phases. This would let us focus on smaller goals while still keeping the longer ones in focus. It would also guide us on choices we made, acting as a road map to make sure things we were doing matched our short term goals and supported our longer term ones.


Here's what our original phases, time lines and goals looked like:


Phase I – Original Projection 2005-2012

In Phase I of our business plan our key success criteria were: Establish a brand, grow our mail order customer list to 500 names, secure long term vineyard sources, make high quality wine, achieve high customer loyalty and satisfaction, start distribution sales and reach a cash flow positive state at a production level of 600-800 cases per year.

Phase II – Original Projection 2012-2019

In Phase II of our business plan our key objectives are: Move into a dedicated urban facility, handle 100% of our own production, grow our mailing list to 1500 names, establish a wine club and grow it to 200+ names, expand our restaurant and retail presence to 100+ locations and maintain a cash flow positive state and profitability at a production level of 1200-2000 cases per year.

Phase III – Original Projection 2015-

In Phase III of our business plan our key objectives are: Purchase and plant an Estate Vineyard in the Uvas Valley/Uvas Canyon area of the Santa Cruz Mountains with a total property size of not less than 30 acres and a vineyard size of 8-12 acres. Bring that vineyard to bearing by 2019 and build an Estate Winery with a tasting room and event hosting facilities by 2019. Maintain profitability at a production level of 3000-5000 cases.


I'm busy working on a revision now because we feel that we'll met all the goals we laid out for Phase I in 2010. We're laying out the ground work and plan for Phase II and seeing if it is possible to move the time line up by a year. The small blue binder has been scrapped for a 50+ page document complete with financial forecasts, budget projects, marketing plans and 100's of other details.


We've started to meet with bankers and sought out advise on attracting investors to help fund the next round of expansion. We think we have a solid plan and a good story to tell. It reminds me though of two quotes from two different CEO's I've worked for. Quote #1; "Now it's about executing flawlessly". Quote #2; "The most important quarter of your life is this one". I think both sum up exactly where we are at.

Closing Q2

Stefania has been busy working on the books for Q2. A few months ago I shared our Q1 results in this blog.

We are still looking at the numbers as preliminary but they should be 99% accurate at this point. Our sales were up 8% from Q2 of last year, and that makes it a record Q2. Wholesale sales were actually up more than direct sales at 8.5% compared to Q2/09 and up over 50% from Q1 of this year. We've already passed total wholesale sales from 2009.

We are just half way though the year but it looks like we're on track for a record breaking 2010 across all our sales channels. Being conservative in projections at this point it looks like we will be up at least 40% and that wholesale sales will be up over 100%.

Our success thus far in 2010 has put me to work updating our business plan. No small task, our revised plan will top out over 60 pages! I'll have some details tomorrow.

Grapes Gone Wild

Sunday Stefania and I slept in late. We had no plans for the 4th of July and by 11:45 we were wondering what to do. The temps had reached the low 90's so a few hours out in the sun doing hard exercise seemed like a good plan!

We hooked up the bike rack, packed a picnic lunch, loaded on the bikes and headed to Coyote Creek Trail for a 21 mile bike ride. Yep, more than a little nuts and Stef got over hot on the last 5 miles. We stopped for lunch half way though and had a nice picnic by the river.

On our way back down the trail my shoe lace got tangled in my sprocket and I had to stop along side the trail. Stefania spotted this growing along the river right where we stopped.

They are grapes growing wild along the river bank. I looked around to see if there was any sign of a past vineyard and there really wasn't. Most likely some time, perhaps as long as 40-50 years ago, some grapes washed down the creek from a vineyard up the valley and took root here. It's also possible that birds 'deposited' seeds along the banks.

In the wild, and left to their own, grapes take a long time to get established. All kinds of critters feed on the leafs, and in a dense riverside canopy they have to struggle for sunlight. It takes four years to get a plant established in a vineyard, it can easily take 20 in the wild. Eventually though the plant will do what it has evolved to do and climb up a tree for sunlight. This one had finally climbed to the top of a young sycamore.

Once the vine gets its leafs up in the sun, it will finally set fruit. In the wild the fruit set will usually be poor and spotty like you see below. But then the plant only needs to get a little fruit out there to reproduce. Once it's firmly established it will set more fruit.

Our final picture is a stop we took along the trail. You can see the picnic loaded up on Stef's bike. I was trying to take a picture of a very curious young buck across the trail, not 15 feet away, but as I pulled out my camera, another bike came along and scared him off.


I'm sure we will be back on the trail again this summer, maybe just not on so hot a day.

Cleaning Up the iPhone's Camera

I couldn't come up with a good title for this collection of pictures, and I know we've used 'Random Pictures' as a title before.

When people come and visit the winery I often explain how the fog hangs during the summer on the peaks just about a mile from the winery. This keeps the vineyard cool, even on sunny days and preserves good acidity in the grapes.

I took this picture about a mile from the winery on HWY 35 (on one of those peeks) on a day we were moving barrels from Big Basin. You can see the heavy fog. The temperature was about 58 degrees

I meant to take another picture at the winery, but of course I got busy moving wine and checking on the vineyard and didn't remember until we were back on the road. Luck would have it though that just about a 1/2 mile down the road from the winery a Cal Trans crew had set up traffic control to manage some road repairs. I took this picture as we waited.


You can see bright blue sky and the crewman is in short sleeves. It was about 78 degrees at this location, 20 degrees warmer than just a mile and a half away. This is one of the key things that makes Chaine d'Or such a great spot for grapes.

The next couple of pictures came from a hike at Calero. This little guy is a California Alligator lizard. It was late on the trail, about 8 PM so he was moving slow.


Stef couldn't resist picking him up. It was a busy critter day on the trails, we saw deer, wild turkey, dozens of moles, hawks and turkey vultures.


And the last random picture from Amber's birthday party. I think my favorite wine was the 2005 Karl Lawrence to Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon. The Latour was from 1995 and was also really great. No sucky wines in the group!

Hiking

We've been hiking the local foothills the past couple of months and I thought I'd put up a couple pictures.

The little bucky was grazing at Calero and didn't pay us any attention as we approached. I must have snapped 20 pictures of him, each time getting closer and closer. I was 25 feet away and he didn't seem to care we were right there in front of him, in fact I think he posed on purposed.


The vineyard pic if the one I mentioned the other day, it's the one that needs to be trained onto the wires this year. On the other side of the foothills in the background is Calero...not directly behind, but within a couple of miles.



Last weekend we hiked the Zinfandel Trail off Montebello Road. I remember this trail from a few years ago and thought it was a hard hike back then...that was before Paul started taking me on 5 mile treks through the back hills. The Zin trail was kind of a let down since it was so easy and it was heavily traveled the day we went.

Yesterday after Paul got home from work we headed over to Calero and got on the trail at 5:40. Nobody around. It was perfectly quiet. Lots of little moles (or mice? or gophers?) running around in the brush, wild turkeys and their babies, a lizard, a snake skin, a doe and her fawn, and quail. We stopped a couple of times just to enjoy the quiet. This was the first time in the park we got off the main trail and cut over on Vallecito and looped around that way. There were weeds taller than Paul and grasses taller than me!

I found a pyrite cube just off the side of the trail and picked it up - I'm not entirely sure it's native to our geology so I'm continuing to ask around and look it up. There is plenty of quartz at this park and the area is known to be rich in other minerals so I'm not entirely surprised by the find.


For Neil; I'm still breaking in the sturdy hiking boots I've complained about in the past and they are working out better since the shoe guy sold me some leather softener. I need to do another application before they're good for anything longer than a couple of miles. Maybe I'll wear them to dinner in NY ;-)

CFL Light Bulbs and the Environment

I can't be the only person dissatisfied with these new lightbulbs. I really want to do the right thing for the environment and energy savings yadda yadda, but these bulbs have been nothing but a frustrating pain in the patooter. Is it just me?

The latest failure is photographed below. I knew I smelled something off the other night but never found the culprit - the odor dissipated quickly and I failed to note the burnt out bulb (in a bathroom fixture that uses three bulbs).

Why wouldn't I notice a burned out bulb after flipping on the switch? They're never bright right away anyway since they take a bit to reach full lumens...that's a minor complaint overall, but still something I've never fully appreciated.

Gripe number two? These damn things are expensive and are NOT lasting as long as they are supposed to. I've got two 25watt incandescent bulbs out front that I burn every night all night long and only replace them every couple of years or so...the bathroom fixture, which is still relatively new (four years ago I put it in?) and I've had to replace all 3 bulbs already, one I had to replace the second day after buying it. Total and complete failure these things.

I did a walk-thru the house just now and counted 63 lightbulbs - most of them are incandescent and have not been replaced nor have they burned out since I moved in ten years ago. Except the two outside that I mentioned. However...of the flourescent bulbs I bought to save money and energy, I've already been through a box of 12. In four years I've had to throw away more toxic waste than I think is worth for saving a few pennies on the electric bill.

Gripe number three...you can't toss these out in the regular trash. Tell me, when your bulbs burn out, do you drive them back to the hardware store for recycling? Do you make an appointment with your cities hazardous waste collection site? Do you do dispose of them properly?





Note the melted base on the left where the tube meets the plastic. Super.

Thinning and Tucking

Seems like all I've been doing lately is thinning and tucking, thinning and tucking.... so much green growth this year!

I forwarded pictures of the Crimson Clover vineyard to Paul earlier this month and showed him how woolly the vines were. Then I sent him pics of the rows that Gerry and I finished, and the ground that was covered in green from all the foliage we took off.

After that I shot over to the Sesson site and assessed what the next steps are for there. The shoots are ready to be pulled down to make canes and a few are ready for spur positioning. Very quickly I went through one row and took a photo to show "the boss".

Paul relies on me to be his eyes in the vineyards this time of year; he goes to his office job during the day and I fill him in on what's happening with the vines. I know that frustrates him to no end and he's looking forward to the career change, but we're not quite there yet.

As for the Mourvedre vineyard at home, I haven't had the heart yet to drop the clusters on some of the heartier vines. They're amazing this year. We had one casualty with the weedwhacker so I'm sad about that, but not overly concerned.

I've got Zinfandel plants that are purely for landscaping at this point (to shield our driveway from the neighbors) that have sent secondary shoots with flowering clusters already. On the primaries, I think I spotted what looks like the very first few signs of veraison. I've actually enjoyed these grapes for eating, if you can get past all the seeds that is.

That's the quick vineyard update for today - after lunch I'm heading over to the church to clean up their 20 cabernet vines (make that 18, two of them need replacing) and finish up my thinning and tucking.

Unfined and Unfiltered.

I can't recall that we've ever used those terms in any blogs or emails or offer letters we've sent out. Maybe we have, and I'm forgetting, but I really don't remember ever using those terms.

For some wineries it's a big part of their marketing. They even include that on their labels. We don't. I think that's because it's a routine for us not to fine and not to filter, so it is no big deal.

It's not a philosophy in itself, it's just part of the way we make wine. It also doesn't mean we are opposed to either process, in fact we have done both. There are many times I've had a bottle from other producers when I wished they had filtered in particular. Just a couple months ago we opened a bottle of Pinot Noir from the Anderson Valley that had started to re-ferment in the bottle. I wished that producer had filtered the wine to remove any yeast and prevent that. It ruined the bottle.

We've actually filtered four times, and fined once. Our 2008 Chardonnay was fined to remove some excess proteins that could have caused a cloudy appearance at warm temperatures. This is called 'heat stability'. I used Bentonite, which is a clay to remove the protein. We then filtered the wine to remove the Bentonite completely. In 2009 we filtered the Chardonnay. There was some residual sugar in the wine and I wanted to remove any yeast to prevent the wine from going fizzy in bottle.

In 2007 we had one barrel of Uvas Creek Cab that was showing V.A. over .010 and we filtered that barrel to remove any bacteria. We also filtered the topping wine (about 20 gallons) for 0ur 2007 Syrah for the same reason.

That's pretty much our philosophy on fining and filtering. If the wine needs it to prevent or correct an issue, we'll do it. Otherwise we will leave the wine alone.

I actually thought to mention this because Stefania and I opened a 2007 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon on Saturday. The wine had a large amount of sediment in the bottle. That's a result of not filtering. All of our wines should be decanted to remove them from any sediment, especially as they age.

I'm not a believer in fancy decanting. A cheap container should do. Just open the bottle, place some light source behind the bottle and decanter so you can see the wine flow out of the bottle and pour. When you start to see sediment in the bottle neck, stop pouring. That's it, no chunks!

Futures

I first mentioned our Futures Program here:

http://stefaniawine.blogspot.com/2009/02/points-pinot-and-allocations.html

We have just sent out the emails for the summer Futures this week. The program remains pretty much the same. Our top 48 customers have the chance to pre-order our wines before they become available with the general release this Fall. We have about three or four new open spots each time.

There are three wines this time around:

2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains
2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch Mendocino County
2008 Stefania Haut Tubee California

We also did magnums of the Pinot Noir and Syrah. It looks like the magnums will sell out in Futures. There are just three Syrah left today and one Pinot Noir. The 750ml bottles have been allocated so that there will be some available for the regular release.

When we first did Futures 48 was exactly 10% of our list. Now we are closer to 900 people on the list so it's about 5%. We may expand it some next time. It will depend on how things go this fall.

Summer Futures Release Notes

2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains

Alcohol 13.5% pH 3.59

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

2008 Stefania Haut Tubee California

Alcohol 13.8% pH 3.72

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

2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch Mendocino County

Alcohol 14.5% pH 3.71

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

The Split Rail Vineyard

When Stefania and I first started making wine we really wanted to make a Syarh. It's a grape both of us enjoy a great deal and we probably buy more Syrah than any other type of wine. In 2004 and 2005 I searched the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley for a good source of grapes. I kept running into roadblocks. I rejected many vineyards I checked on. Either the farming was not to our very high standards or the location wouldn't yield the type of balance we were after.

When I did find a vineyard I liked I kept hearing the same thing; "We don't have any grapes for sale." That eventually lead us outside of the area and to Eaglepoint Ranch, which offered the high level of farming we demand and a great mountain location that would give us balanced complex fruit. I've kept my ears open though and kept exploring locally for a good Syrah source.

Last year our friend Ian Brand let me know he had taken over a small Syrah vineyard and I was welcome to buy the fruit if I'd like. I knew Ian's farming would be high quality, and the location promised great fruit. We took it last year as an experiment. If we were not happy with the way the wine was going, I could use it in the Haut Tubee or sell it off.

Well we've been very happy, and everyone who has tried the wine from barrel has loved it. This morning Stef and I were out of the house early to meet with Ian at the Vineyard and check on progress. We would have to drive over to Santa Cruz, so on this hot sunny day we needed to be on the road before 8 AM to avoid the bumper to bumper beach traffic that would happen later in the morning.

We arrived on site right at 9AM. Located high on the western slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the vineyard was once a source for David Bruce's Chardonnay. Ten years ago it was grafted over to Syrah. The vines are over 20 years old. This is the view from the edge of the vineyard looking out at Aptos and the Monterey Bay.

Ian wanted to check that he'd done everything as I'd asked for this season. First I asked him to prune to our regular two shoots per spur 8-10 inches between spur protocol. That means yield in this vineyard will drop to about 1 1/2 tons per acre, but I offered to pay him by the acre rather than by the ton.


The vineyard is also dry farmed, no added water and the ground is not plowed as we do in our other vineyards. All of these things reduce yield and increase the flavor in the remaining grapes. I also like the increased air flow our pruning does, which reduces mildew pressure and means fewer treatments. There is also an increase in sun on the fruit clusters which helps get the grapes through the citrus flavor stages and to the flavors of berries, plums and cherries.


The entire vineyard is surrounded by hand split redwood rails produced on the property. That's where the name comes from 'Split Rail Vineyard'. Our production from this site will be very small. We will have just 50 cases of the 2009, and are expecting only 50-100 on average each year. It does finally give us a high quality Syrah location close to home though, and we're very excited by this vineyard.


After our visit we stopped for breakfast at a local coffee shop then headed across the parking lot to a Goodwill store. I get asked often on my preference for decanters and my answer is 'cheap'. All you really need is a container with a hole on the top. Jerry Anderson likes to use a Mason jar. I prefer to check the glass section at Goodwill stores. This 1070's era ship decanter set me back $7.

Latest Restaurant and Wine Shop Update!

Here's where you can currently find our wines locally:

Los Gatos

Cin Cin
Forbes Mill
Summit Store

Aptos

Deer Park Wine

Santa Cruz

Vino Prima
Peachwoods
Hollins House
Vino Cruz
New Leaf Community Markets
Shoppers Corner
Lillian's Italian Kitchen
Caffe Tazzina
El Jardin

Davenport

Davenport Baker

Palo Alto

Vino Locale

Saratoga

Uncorked
Coach House Wine and Spirits

San Jose

The Golf Club at Boulder Ridge

We also have a couple pending delivery later this summer:
PF Chang's in Monterey
Whole Foods in Los Gatos/Cupertino/San Mateo

Mexican Food Mystery

Last week we got an order from El Jardin in Santa Cruz:

http://eljardinrestaurants.com/

They wanted to bring in some local wines to add to their new venture in Santa Cruz. I've had a rant about the wine lists at Mexican restaurants for awhile that I've been meaning to write and this prompted me to do it.

I know when most people think Mexican food it's really Tex-Mex they are thinking of, and El Jardin would fall into that Tex-Mex/Cali-Mex category. What really got me ranting though was the high end places that have started to appear in the wake of the popularity of Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill and Topolobambo. We've tried a few in San Jose and of course I'll look at the wine list.

My first reaction is always WTF???? Chile???? Argentina???? Wines from those countries dominate the lists. Chile and Argentina have in common with Mexico the fact they were both once part of the Spanish Empire. So was Guam. Why no wine from Guam on the list?

California was once PART of Mexico. Over 50% of the people who work in the wine industry in California are first or second generation Mexicans! Don't you think California might just have a little more in common with Mexico and Mexican food than a country of Italian and German immigrants 4000 miles away (Argentina)!

Does Chile sound more Spanish, and thus more Mexican? More Spanish than say Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Santa Rita, Los Carneros, or Paso Robles?

In a time where everyone is thinking more about 'get local', what can be more local than Cali-Mex food with California wine?

Gopher Hunting

The most famous gopher hunter of all time:

That's not exactly the approach I took on Saturday, but it's close. We arrived at Chaine d'Or about 9AM. Kathy, Millie and Amber were there to help Stefania with thinning of the Chardonnay vines. My task for the morning was to 'hunt' gophers. Chaine d'Or is the only vineyard we have not had owls move in to so I still have to kill the little critters myself.

I've got nothing against the little guys personally. It's what they do to a vine that sucks. The picture below is a mature Cabernet Sauvignon vine. This vine had its roots deep enough that it survived the gopher attack. A younger vine would have died.


This is what I'm looking for. This is a fresh dig. That means the little devil is active right in this area. The main tunnel will actually be right between the two fresh piles of dirt. I use a long pole to poke through and fine the tunnel.


The activity was down a lot from two weeks ago. I almost have them out of the vineyard for now. One more run through in another two weeks should do it.

I finished up about 11:30 and spent the next 90 minutes topping the remaining 2008's and all the 2009's in the winery. Stefania and crew finished up about 12:30 for the day. Temps were going to get into the high 80's by 2 PM so we didn't want to work much past 1 PM.

The vineyard looked very good, and the 2009's are coming along well.

Urban Vineyards

Pic is of the Syrah vines in the Haut Tubee vineyard. This is where Paul and I like to hang out with friends, have BBQ's, soak in the hot tub, lounge in the adirondacks and generally kick back and enjoy just about every evening. I did put the canopy up on Easter so I could rotisserie a leg of lamb, I was not going to be thwarted by a little rain storm (ok, it poured on me, but I was out there!!!)



The palm tree is on the neighbors side of fence and is perfect for our back yard vineyard because it's not dense enough to provide a lot of shade. The vines in front of the hot tub have filled in perfectly and are all done flowering. We have great fruit set and have had good luck keeping powdery mildew at bay using Stylet Oil.




The front vineyard is still a work in progress. I was just thinking how pretty it could be if we put sod between the rows and made it look a lot more urban-ey, but that would defeat my number one priority and that's saving water. The row closest to the camera is still flowering so I didn't pull those shoots down yet to make canes - even though I won't keep the fruit this year, I don't want to risk breaking them. After flowering the shoots harden off and are more pliable, making it easier to pull them down to the cordon wire and get them wrapped around.


A couple of weeks ago we brought in a ton of river rock to put up under the eaves in the front. Originally there were tropical shade plants that Paul wanted to keep and I talked him out of them. Tropical foliage with a vineyard? That's even too eclectic for my tastes. So it's been raw dirt for over a year and I didn't want to invest in decking for a space we rarely use though we talked about that too. Eventually the cats using the dirt as a litter box put me over the edge and I said, "that's it, we're getting rocks!".



Paul had a great idea, why not use the leftovers to line the vineyard under the rows, that'll help keep the soil in place and look better than bare dirt in the winter. He figured we'd have a lot of leftover rock from the ton order. Nope. I'm going to need a second ton to fill in the rest.

Soon as flowering is done, we'll clean up the rest of the "weeds" (the dead and dried up wildflower cover crop) and I'll pull down that last row of shoots and get those trained on the wire. The two rows under the magnolia tree are behind, but I should be able to pull down at least one half of the cordon.

One thing I noticed for sure with the Crimson Clover, it definitely helped the other plants I have up front. The rosemary is the brightest green I've seen, the sage flowered and the lavender bloomed for the first time. Could have something to do with the wet winter we had too, but clover is supposed to put nitrogen back into the soil and I definitely noticed a difference in foliage color.

iPhone Update, 15 months later...

Remember how iNlove I was with my new iPhone? What do I say? I've never been a phone person so that part of the gadget is virtually worthless to me, however...

I'm a text junky. I admit. Paul and I will text each other while sitting side by side on the couch...lame huh? You should have seen our first cell bill after we discovered that function. Good times.

Next came the apps. I'm very selective about the toys I'll put on my phone, mostly because I'm overwhelmed by the choices. I'm to the point of needing an adviser to help me decide what tools I really want or need. The most useful one for the winery is Swipe. It lets us process credit cards remotely for wine sold at events.

I seldom use the camera feature, but find myself taking notes more often that I would have thought. I downloaded a decibel reader, to see how loud Kathy and Millie's "little mutt" really is when she snores, and I play the occasional game of Frogger.

The greatest use so far has been checking email, using google for crossword term searches, and other internet stuff.

I've set the stage. I'm ready for an iPad. From everything I've read, it's exactly what I want and need. I can move Swipe over to it and it becomes a business expense.

As for an update on the iPhone, let me tell you a quick story. Paul had the original one, I waited for 3G. Last month he dropped his, again, on the concrete crushpad and it shattered the glass. I gave him mine, we switched out our sim cards and I bought some press on cover protectors...for now it will have to do.

No Intern this Year

It's June 1st and there is plenty to be done in the vineyards. We didn't get an intern this year, mainly because we don't need one. I'm full time with the winery now and caught up on the major projects.

This week I'll head up to Chaine d'Or and finish thinning. Doesn't look like the Cabernet will need as much as the Chardonnay. We've been steadily pruning the spurs on the Chard so that they aren't so high into the wires. It means selecting the best looking shoot from the cordon and letting it grow so we can turn it into a new spur.

I'll need to check on the Sesson vineyard in Morgan Hill. It's a year behind schedule, but the site is vigorous enough that I think we'll see huge improvements this summer. We might even get some cordons trained, that'd be fantastic.

The Crimson Clover vineyard is likely still in flower right now so I'll leave it alone for another week or two. I'll go check it, but I anticipate that I've got some time before I can thin and I hate to make a special trip just to sucker - I can do that while I'm there cleaning up the shoots.

Harrison's Vineyard looks great, we checked in with Mark last weekend and Arastradero is caught up too. The 'estate' vines are still flowering, but I'm getting ready to start pulling cordons down in the Mourvedre. I'll dose them up with water pretty good this summer and then let them take off on their own after that - a few are lagging behind, but I'm not surprised given the shaded spots up by the magnolia tree.

For my sis-in-law about Cropping:

Each mature vine will have up to 10 spurs (5 on each side of the main trunk). Each spur will have 2 shoots and each shoot will carry 2 clusters of grapes. So for example, the Mourvedre vineyard I have at the house, which is 25 plants, will produce 1,000 clusters of grapes.

{25 plants x [2 clusters x (2 shoots x 10 spurs)]} = 1,000

When we say how we'll crop the vineyard, we are talking about the method of pruning or training we'll use to control that final number.

Some winemakers and winegrowers may choose to have only one shoot per spur and only one cluster per shoot. In the example above, the yield would be 500 clusters.

I keep joking with Paul that I want to crop the heck out of the Mourvedre, 2,000 clusters!