Pops Birthday & Sh*t My Husband Says

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_________________
stefaniawine.blogspot.com

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

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

Ten Photos in Random Order

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


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


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


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


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



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


The pinot.


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

Recycle Glass Week

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

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

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

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

SGCI 2010 * Special Issue, A Verallia Publication

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

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

Busy Days

Here's a recap of the past few days.

Thursday we spent all day at the winery.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Waiting is the Hardest Part.

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

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

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

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

Prep and Cleaning

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

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

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

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

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

New Phone, New Toys, Back in the Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falling out of love with Apple and the iPhone

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

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

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

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

Neat toy.

Useless toy.

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

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

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

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

BS.

Among the place I don't get coverage:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vegas this Weekend.

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

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

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

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

Vineyard Check Ups

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

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

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

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


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


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

2008 Stefania Haut Tubee

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

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

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

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

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

Final breakdown at bottling:

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

Final Alcohol 13.8% pH 3.72

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

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

2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch

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

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

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

Final Alcohol 14.5% pH 3.71

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

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

2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains

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

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

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

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

Final Alcohol 13.5% pH 3.59

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

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

Bordentown - U.S.A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny Quotes from the trip...

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

Here are the three I did capture:

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

#2 "Cross and Skull Bones"

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


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

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

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

Awesome.

Back to the Grind

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

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

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

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

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

Chat soon...gotta run

Saturday Night's Line Up

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

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

Tourist Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick Update

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

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

Cheers!

Allocation Details

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess That Pitcher -Free Wine

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

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

Labor Day Weekend

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

What Makes a Vintage Great?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that makes it a bad vintage right?

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Travel and Events

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Company Retreat

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

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

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


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

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


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

Bleh, August Temps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Blogging Break

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Crimson Clover Visit

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sip - Savor - Support

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

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

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

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

The Haut Tubee Has a Plan (Final)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Haut Tube Goes Mainstream (Part 4)

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!