Late Big Sur Pictures

The weekend after Labor Day each year some close friends host camping in Big Sur. It's a perfect time for us to get away. We are close to harvest, but being away keeps the panic down as everyone else starts picking and just makes us focus on something else.

I've got a new computer so guess what? These pictures are in reverse order of the weekends events, so I'll tell the story backwards. :)

Nature really is great. Here's new baby redwoods starting out from a tree burnt out in the fires last summer.

Stef and I hiked on Sunday morning up to about 2200 feet above the Big Sur Gorge. It was an impromptu hike, we hadn't brought a lot of water with us. Just about two hours and 5 miles total.

Stef looking out at the ocean about 3/4 of the way up. We'd like to go back and finish the total 8 miles, but we just didn't have enough water with us this day to finish.

Me at the fork between the trail to the waterfall and Manuel Peak. The waterfall trail is still closed from landslides.

On Saturday we played in the river for a few hours and Stef caught about two dozen crawdads for dinner. Then we headed up the gorge to see how far we could get with the very low water.

This is the end of the trail. We had to wade through the creek a couple times to get this far but at this point we would have to go waist deep so we stopped for the day.

We were on the hook for cooking for 12 that night. Here I am ready to cook with a glass of our 2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and my special shirt for the weekend.

Stefania boiled up the crawdads and I started in on the potatoes. Wrapped in foil and thrown in the hot coals for about 75 minutes. Turn them every 20 minutes so they cook evenly.

Then on go the Prime Rib Steaks. 13 in all over open flame. There's no hair left on my hand :)

Sunday night was a bit of an adventure. We had about 1/2 inch of rain with us in our little two man 7 foot tent. We made it through though with just a little damp and mud and headed home the next day.

More Numbers Coming In

Tuesday night we actually moved all the lab equipment from the winery in Woodside to our home. It's just easier to bring samples back here than drive up to Woodside each time we have a test to do right now. Woodside is also the most Northern site we have and our home is more in the middle.

Jerry was out gathering samples and Stefania ran tests yesterday morning. Here is her email to me:


Vista Verde:
Brix Hygrometer: 24
Brix Refractometer: 24
pH: 3.58
TA: .9
Visual appearance of seeds, many bright green
Juice a deeper red

Crimson Clover:
Brix Hygrometer: 25
Brix Refractometer: 24.95
pH: 3.67
TA: .7
Visual appearance of berries and seeds exceptional
Juice color visibly lighter color than above, though I probably didn't get as good a skin extraction due to the thicker skins.

Bottom line.....

We're going to turn the water on again at Crimson Clover to get through this weekends heat, then likely pick on Wednesday next week. Vista Verde still needs 10-15 days. Maybe right around October 1st. Stef has pictures she'll get up soon.

On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!!

Ok, not quite "GO" yet, we still have another week or so before harvest kicks into gear, but we are getting very very close. I was going to tell you about the chardonnay numbers, but Paul beat me to it (see yesterdays blog).

If I remember, I'll take pics of the lab work today when I test the Crimson Clover cabernet samples.

Most other winegrowers are probably freaking out about the upcoming heat spike that is in the forecast but I think it's a great opportunity to give the grapes one last push of sugar energy. Once that sugar level peaks, it's all flavor ripening from there on out - I've tasted it, I've experienced it on my palate while walking the rows. It's in the skins. I can't really explain it beyond that.

Grape talk aside for a quick second, we saw Spamalot lastnight. Absolutely hilarious! A gas! Does anyone say that anymore? It was good to get out on a date and laugh at silly jokes, gestures, and totally absurd humor. I wasn't sure I would "get it" having never watched or understood any of Monty Pythons movies, but you didn't need to be familiar at all, though it helped with some of the parodies if you were.

I'm already talking about getting cheap seats for Saturday night and going with friends. Fourth row was nice, but there are no bad seats at the SJCPA so I'm headed back to the balcony this time.

Some Early Numbers

Tuesday night we took samples of Chardonnay at the Chaine 'd Or vineyard.

Upper Section:
Brix: 25
pH: 3.14
TA: .96

Lower Section:
Brix: 22
pH: 3.24
TA: 1.04

Combined:
Brix: 23
pH: 3.25
TA: 1.01

As we walked through the vineyard Stef though everything tasted "Juicy and fruity but still tart." The numbers matched that assessment. We still need 7-10 days I think to get the pH a little higher and let the TA (Acidity) drop a bit more. The 1/4 inch of rain we had on Sunday night can be a risk, Chardonnay is prone to rot, but we saw no rot in the vineyard so the rain should actually help by keeping the BRIX in check while the acidity falls.

Ideal numbers for us would be 24-25 Brix, 3.4 pH and .8 TA so we're pretty close to that. The flavors are almost where we want them, The acidity is masking the fruit some now, so I think that will be key over the next week.

Details of Our Fall Release

Here are the details of our Fall Release. Stefania has spent the day stuffing letters and they went out in the mail today.

2008 Stefania Chardonnay Chaine d’Or Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains

Price: $24 per bottle. Total Production 72 cases.

This is our first effort from the Chaine d Or vineyard since taking it over in the summer of 2007. In 2008 we severely pruned back the old vines in an effort to lower the spurs on each plant which had gotten very high in the past 20 years. This contributed to one of the lowest yields the vineyard has ever seen with just less than one ton per acre harvested on September 20th 2008.

The wine was immediately pressed and allowed to settle for 24 hours before being pumped into a chilled tank to start fermentation. Fermentation was on all native yeast and when the wine reached 16 BRIX it was inoculated with Malolactic starter and transferred to a combination of Sequin Moreau and Claude Gillet French oak barrels to complete fermentation. The lees were stirred every week and the wine completed both fermentations before Christmas. Stirring of the lees was then done every 3 weeks. The wine was bottled early, in May of 2009, as has been the tradition at Chaine d’Or to preserve its fresh fruit flavors.

The finished wine is bright and crystal clear with a light golden hue. The nose is rich with peach and stone fruit notes. There are hints of the citrus fruit notes of lemon and lime that are typical of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the wine is broad but refreshing. The oak notes are moderate and reflect the care we take in selecting our coopers. I suspect you will think we used a much lower percentage of new oak than we did as the effect is so well integrated.

Serve this wine just below cellar temperature at 48-50 degrees. We are releasing it in October so that it will be available when Dungeness Crab season starts in early November.

2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard Santa Clara Valley

Price: $38 per bottle. Total production 115 cases.

This is our third wine from this vineyard in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The grapes were harvested on October 29th 2007. Starting in 2007 Bill Holt of Uvas Creek began to only allow women to work in his vineyard. “They are gentler with the grapes”, was his reasoning. We 100% destemmed the clusters but did not crush the berries. Fermentation was on native yeast and we had to foot tread the must daily until the berries began to break up about 15 BRIX. The wine was raised in 60% new Sequin Moreau French Oak.

The wine is deep red with a pronounced nose of summer cherries and dark berry fruit. On the palate, there are powerful notes of ripe berries, spices and cherry fruit. The fruit is layered and complex with a classic Cabernet Sauvignon profile. This is a more serious and masculine Uvas Creek than the 05 and 06, but still retains the balance and red fruit profile of previous versions.

2007 Stefania Haut Tubee California

Price: $20 per bottle. Total production 94 cases.

Haut Tubee (pronounced Hot Tub) was inspired by the vines planted around our hot tub. The blend includes Chaine d’Or Cabernet Sauvignon, Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and Syrah, Grenache, Zinfandel and Mourvedre from the small vineyards we manage.

Each individual vineyard was processed on it own and the components blended in barrel. All lots were de-stemmed and allowed to ferment on native yeasts. Hand punch downs were done on all lots and fermentations lasted 14 to 22 days. The finished wine was transferred to tank before being assembled and aged in one new Hermitage barrel and 3 neutral oak barrels. The Haut Tubee program allows us to process grapes from the many micro vineyards we manage and produce a finished wine that expresses the dedication we show to these small vineyards.

The wine is deep red with a nose of spice, smoke, and ripe blackberry fruit. It is lush and soft with rich berry and summer fruit notes. The 2007 version of this wine is just over 50% Syrah and the wine shows the richness of the Syrah grape. The 25% new oak added notes of toast, smoke and rich spice. This wine should continue to develop in bottle for some time.

Fall Release

This week I finished the letter and allocation amounts and Stefania is working on getting all the shipping information together and the allocations to fit right on the order form. That means we are almost ready for the Fall Release!

This will be our third Fall Release and our 7th release overall. We'll be doing just two releases a year now, one in Spring and one in Fall. I'll have some more information about the wines and details on making them as well as tasting notes over the next few days.

For right now I just wanted to let everyone know the schedule and wines we will be releasing. There will be three wines in this release, that's a first for us also. We'll have our first white wine, the 2008 Chardonnay Chaine 'd Or Vineyard, 2007 Haut Tubee and 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard.

We are trying to get letters out on the 15th, that's next week. Shipping will start in mid-October when we usually have good weather around the country. All the letter will go out at once this time and I'm going to be pretty generous with allocations and extra requests. I know a lot of people are cutting back and if someone does want more wine, I'm going to get it to them.

The only thing we'll be really short on is Chardonnay. A great deal was already committed to accounts that Chaine d'Or has had for 15+ years, so most people will not get an allocation of the Chardonnay. Do ask for it though if you'd like some and I'll do my best.

I'll have more information in the next few days.

Visiting Crimson Clover

We made a pit stop for a donut and a coffee for Stefania before heading out to visit Crimson Clover this morning and check on sugar levels. It's been a great morning. Some high fog rolled in about 7:30 this morning and the vineyard was cool. The sun was just starting to break through when we arrived.



The grapes have fully turned now and are getting ripe. This vineyard seems to always have loose clusters with very small berries. I'll have to watch tannin extraction in fermentation to make sure the wine doesn't get too tannic.




This is exactly the effect we are after and all the work we've done early in the year is to achieve this. The clusters are hanging down in dappled sunlight, with a balanced amount of grapes on each vine. Yields will be small, about 2-3 tons per acre but complexity and depth of the fruit is what we are after. The clusters look really great this year.

A close up of the sun hitting the clusters. It's not full on direct sun, the leafs create 'dapple' on different parts of the cluster through the day as the sun moves. We're checking on three things now in the vineyard. First we pull of berries to do a sugar test. This gives us a BRIX reading. We want to make sure there is enough sugar to convert to alcohol and provide body. 22.5 BRIX creates about 12.5% alcohol. We usually try and harvest between 23 and 25 BRIX.

We are also checking on 'secondary' signs of ripeness. The seeds should be brown and the skins of the grapes should break apart easily in your mouth. The skins especially gives a clue for the ripeness of the tannins. That will make the wine smooth and enjoyable.

Finally we check on flavor. Cabernet Sauvignon goes through a phase I call 'the meany greenies'. It taste green like bell pepper and green beans. Only sunshine will cure this, dappled sunshine, so as not to bake the flavors out or even worse burn them in. Next will come red fruit flavors, then berries and finally jammy flavors. We try and pick between the red fruit and berry stage to get a little of each. Right now the green flavors are gone, but the berry has not started to show up. We're still 2-3 weeks away from picking at least.

The other task: bird rescue. It may seem like we hate the little birds from all the things we do to keep them out of the vineyard and away from the grapes, but Stef and I both really love birds. We have feeders around the house and call the birds that nest around us our pets. We just love the grapes too and need to bring them in at harvest.

This little guy had gotten his head stuck. I had to cut him out of the netting. He was pretty upset, squawking at me the entire time, but he was safely removed.

In all we got four birds out of the nets this morning. Stef is holding a little finch with a red neck that she's just rescued. The homeowners at Crimson Clover are walking the vineyard every night and clearing the nets of any of these little guys who have gotten stuck. The vineyard looked great. We'll check on it again next Monday and we expect it will be ready to pick around the 25th or 26th.

Concert Tonight

My first "Rock and Roll" album - now if only I had a player....

Yes it's true, I heard that Def Leppard would be in town for a concert and I bought tickets the day they were available. I've been looking forward to this since I was 12 years old.

Actually, I would have been a little bit older, closer to 14 or 15. All I know is that I tortured my mom when I put this on to play. I like(d) to listen to music loud, really, really loud. The more she told me to turn it down, the more I turned up the volume. Of course I'm partially deaf now, but hey, what rebellious teenager gives a flip about that? Forty? I'll be dead by then! Hah. Sigh.

And as long as I'm trippin' down memory lane, pictures of my very first record album below. Movie soundtrack to One on One - because it had a picture of Robbi Benson on the back cover and I thought he was soooooo cute. The music is pretty ok too, if you like Seals & Crofts (probably a good thing I don't have a record player now that I think about it).

Anyway, looking forward to blowing my ears out some more tonight, Cheap Trick and Poison are playing too, that should be fun (?!). Last time I saw Poison they were playing with Jet Boy and Motley Crue at the Oakland Arena ~20 years ago. Our friend and rock and roll journalist Katherine tells me that Jet Boy is still actively playing, somewhere...I bet if I kept digging around I could find the ticket stub.

Eternal Flame Chicago

When it was dedicated on August 22, 1972, the eternal flame was Chicago's first memorial to honor the dead from four wars, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The Eternal Flame Memorial at Daley Plaza is a granite slab bearing a bronze circular disk containing a natural gas flame that burns perpetually. The inscription reads as follows: Eternal flame in memory of the men and women who have served in our armed forces." Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserves and Merchant Marines.
The flame which burns continuously was lit by Mrs. Albina Nance, who in 1972 was the president of the Illinois Gold Star Mothers.

Source: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM6TN9_Eternal_Flame_Daley_Plaza_Chicago_IL

The photo I took of the pigeons milling around the flame was meant to be funny - I came up with several captions about grilling, barbecued bird, etc. But it turns out I'm not the first person to capture the pigeons congregating around the eternal flame and so the humor value has been lost.

Why am I posting about it anyway? Because in another couple of days I'll put up pictures from my mom's trip to Chicago in the late 60's and compare them to a couple pictures I took from the other day.

My mom didn't get to see the Eternal Flame at Daley Plaza because it wasn't there yet, she was five years too early. I bet if she ever goes back to visit again there will still be a bunch of pigeons singeing their feathers...

Chicago Wrap Up

We're back home now and back in the regular routine. We had a fantastic time in Chicago and I think we'll be back in the winter/spring for a preview of our Spring Release.

Saturday we slept in to rest up for the party Saturday night. Since we'd be skipping dinner we decided to load up on a big lunch. We started with a walk to Daly plaza to see some of the sculptures there. There's a large Picasso in the center of the square that Stef wanted a picture of.

Then we walked down to the Gold Coast and landed at Carmine's on Rush and State. This was Stefania's Lasagna:



I had a classic New York Steak with Roasted Peppers. One of the best steaks I've had. A prime cut, cooked perfectly.

We managed to spend two hours at lunch. Those aren't dishes you choke down in a hurry. Besides it was fun watching the comings and goings from a street side table. That night at the party I went to show a picture of the lasagna and everyone I was talking with also had a picture of their lunch. Food and wine people are a little weird, we all photograph our meals.

This was the rush to get food as our friend Francis laid out everything he'd brought to the party.

We had a fantastic time. Hooking up again with old friends and meeting new people. We've been to Chicago so often now that there were neighbors of our hosts who recognized us and we caught up with them also. Stef and I managed to try all the Zinfandels and Syrah's at the event. The 2003 Copain Broken Leg Syrah was my favorite. In all I think we each tried about 60 wines.

The bus ride back to the hotel from the event was a chance for one last picture. Here our friend 'Tbird' shows off his purple tongue while lounging on another new friend from Florida. That is a bottle of wine in his hands.



The next morning we had to make a 10am flight. Luckily we were able to upgrade to first class and do some recovering in the Admirals Club at the airport. This was the view of downtown from the club. The warm cookies helped too in the recovery process and we were back at home in time to have some friends over for dinner a just a bit more wine.

Friday in Chicago

We did sleep in a get a late start yesterday. Stef and I are not big breakfast eaters so we skipped anything in the morning to save up for this:


A Chicago style deep dish pizza from Gino's East. It's a long patient wait (45 minutes) from the time you order until it shows up, and you shouldn't have much more eating planned for the day. We did more shopping in the afternoon getting in a few miles of walking before heading back to the hotel.

The Art Institute was open late on Friday, until 9PM. We headed over about 5:30 and spent a few hours there. There is a newly opened Modern and Contemporary wing and we checked that out. The new addition is very nice and it's more open than the neo-classical design of the old building, with great views of the city and park.

We spent a good amount of time going through a special exhibit about wine from ancient times to modern times and the art associated with it. This is a famous piece of Greek pottery that you've probably seen if you have any books about wine that include a history section.

Most of our time though was spent in the Modern and Contemporary section. A good section of cubism.

Lots of abstract expressionism, including a really good selection of pieces from artist like Jackson Pollack, just before they went fully abstract, which for some reason I didn't take a picture of, but got this one instead.

We then walked back at dusk through the park to visit the Bean.

A lot of people where trying to get angles of the bean without people in the picture, an almost impossible task, but I think the entire point of the Bean is that people interact with it. As you approach it, it actually looks like you are inside the Bean.

We finally got a little hungry again around 10:00 PM and after a drink at Catch 35, we grabbed a wedge salad from Morton's. We got back to the room pretty late, with tired feet, another fun day in Chicago.

Day One in Chicago

It was rainy and cool in the morning so Stef and I spent about an hour in the hotel gym. We had lunch at Catch 35 right next to the hotel, then headed down Michigan Ave. for some shopping. I miss Marshall Fields, but we did hit a few favorites and popped into the Apple store. I only took one picture yesterday, a day view from our room.



We had a nice get together from 5-7 and opened one of every wine we've made. The Pinot Noir went fast, I didn't get any. The Uvas Creek Cabs also showed very well. We then headed off to dinner at Flemings for more tasting. We had about 12-15 1999 California Cabernet's and a selection of other wines. Flemings set us up in a very nice private room and we had great service.

We closed the night back in our room again with about 8 of us finishing off the Cabs. I finally got into bed about 1:30. Today we're off to the art museum and still haven't finalized dinner plans. I'm leaning towards deep dish pizza at Gino's.

Chicago Bound

Tonight we will be pouring our wines for friends in Chicago. Yesterday was a travel day. Not a bad one overall. There is a direct flight from San Jose to Chicago that leaves at 1:20, so we had a relaxing morning before the hell that is airports.

I've learned to just laugh. And point. Come on, you've been on the plane with this guy. There is at least one of him on every flight. It's a mandatory FAA regulation. 4 people, 11 carry ons, 4 that will not fit into any bin. In fact I often wonder how it was all transported to the airport, it wouldn't all fit in my car.

This went on for 14 minutes, then we sat on the runway waiting for a new departure window, since we had missed our original one. Planes need bouncers. At minute 3 of trying to get settled in, the bouncer should give a warning. At minute 5, they just fling you, and your 97 pound carry on, out the door.

The flight was ok for summer travel. Just 15 minutes of bumpy thunderstorm, 45 minutes of whining children and one baby who cried for just 217 of the 243 total minutes of the flight. Ear phones on the iPhone are a blessing.

This is why we grow great grapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A great sunny day, with the fog hanging just of the coast keeping things cool.


We got downtown to our hotel about 8:30. This is the view from our bedroom window.

Big thanks to Jack B. for setting up the hotel. We hurried over to the Frontera Grill for margarita's and some fantastic food. The best way to end any travel day is with tequila.

It's That Time Again

Last year I wrote this blog about this time of the season:

http://stefaniawine.blogspot.com/2008/09/these-are-times-that-try-mens-souls.html

We're in it again. The nets are on and done, the grapes are thinned and the work in the vineyard is done. Now we wait, and worry, and worry and wait. We'll have a heat spell for sure before it's over, and a threat of rain too I bet.

Now we'll try to focus on other things and let the grapes be grapes and do what nature does with them. We're headed to Chicago for a 5 day vacation and a big wine party this Saturday. Thursday night we'll be pouring our wine for friends in Chicago. When we get back we will pick up the gym routine and make the final training camp push before harvest.

Right now our focus will be on getting ourselves ready for harvest. The grapes, they will take care of themselves. It's time for us to stop being 'helicopter parents'.

Restaurant James Randall, Los Gatos

We are headed to Los Gatos tonight as one of the featured winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains at Restaurant James Randall.

http://www.restaurantjamesrandall.com/Upcoming_Events.html

This will be my first winemaker dinner and I'm very nervous. Excited too, and a little giddy.

I booked a table for five tonight; joining Paul and I are Kathy and Millie, and Millie's sister Ila who is here on vacation from Colorado. When we aren't putting her to work we treat her to good food and wines, lots and lots of them.

Last year when Ila was here she helped plant new vines at an installation in Morgan Hill. It doesn't sound like very hard work, but let me just say this: When your day to day work lifestyle has you at a desk in front of computer, anything above and beyond an hour in the field is exhausting. I know. It took me a couple of seasons of working in the vineyards before I was able to make it past a couple of hours.

When our summer intern came to help out, Paul insisted she break for 15 minutes after each hour of work. "Sit down in the shade, consume some calories or a sport drink, and make sure you get water in you".

I wonder if I'll talk about that tonight...I have no idea what to say to a room full of strangers.

Well anyway, I'm looking forward to it, I think it will be a good time.

There are still some open tables available if you are interested, call to make a reservation and we'll see you there.

Cheers!

After Bird Netting, Then What? Peppers!

That's right, Hatch Chilies from New Mexico!

I bought a 25 pound box of them yesterday. Today I roasted them on the grill, put them all in the stew pot to steam for half an hour, then peeled and bagged them.
25lbs = 10 quart sized ziplock baggies.

I'm already thinking about getting another box but I won't roast all of them again. I like to make Chile Rellenos out of this particular pepper because it has a lot of fire. As for how many scoville points these have, I'm not certain, but I can tell you after taste testing one raw, they are HOT!

I had to wiki it...here goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale
Claims that these are somewhere around 2,500 -- 8,000 Scoville Units (my error, they are units not points).

One box.

One grill.

One stew pot.

Ten one quart ziplock baggies.

Three hours out of my day...

Burning your lips off......Priceless!

Picking Up Stuff and a Small Fire Update

This morning we drove up to Big Basin Vineyards to pick up some equipment that we had there that we won't be using this year. Three 300 liter topping tanks and 5 barrel racks needed to come back home. I'll probably end up selling those since we don't have a lot of storage room and they are sitting in the garage right now. Everything went pretty smooth and just a few hours to make the run.

Stefania and I have been getting inquires and emails about the fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dave Tong has been doing a good job on his blog of providing updates so I've not posted any. The fire is far from any of our vineyards and we've not had anything to worry about. The area burning is one of least populated in the entire mountains, and too cool to grow grapes.

S0me people have asked us about smoke so I thought I'd take a couple pictures at Big Basin this morning. Big Basin is about 6 miles from the fire lines, and at the top of a basin that would collect smoke if it was an issue. We've all been pretty luck in that the smoke has mostly blown out to sea. Below you can see one of the newer plantings at Big Basin and the bright blue and clear skies.


This is an older section of the vineyard. You can see a little fog still hanging in the horizon, but no smoke.

We're very safe of course, and the day the fire started I had a good laugh at the TV coverage. There was a reporter at the fire HQ in Watsonville, about 25 miles from the fire, with her 'fire coat' on. When she went back to the newsroom in San Jose, the desk anchors were actually the same distance from the fire. No coats for them though.

Checking on Vista Verde

We went last night to check on Vista Verde and make a call on bird netting. The vineyard has had two breeches in the fence this year and was attacked both times by deer. The damage was pretty bad, and we wanted to see if there is enough fruit to make netting worthwhile.

This is a steep difficult vineyard. Stefania is at the very top and the vines go to the tree line below. On Google Earth it shows as a total of a 248 foot drop from top to bottom of the site. Across the hill is Varner and Thomas Fogarty wineries.


About 1/2 the plants are damaged. Most look like they will recover OK, but they won't have good fruit this year. It's too bad because the fruit that was left was wonderful. Here are a few clusters at the top section of the vineyard where the deer didn't attack.



We decided not to net. There just looks like 800 pounds or so of fruit, and it would take 4-6 man days to net the vineyard, or about $500. That's not worth the expense for so little fruit. We will risk going without nets. The vineyard is fairly large, and the birds have not started on it yet, so there's a chance we will pull some fruit. I sent Jerry out today to remove any green clusters.

Part of the issue with the deer is that the damaged plants lack the leafs to ripen fruit as fast as the undamaged plants. Some of the damaged plants also threw a second crop after the fence was fixed. None of those grapes will be ripe in time for harvest. InOctober though they will look ripe to the harvest crew, they just won't taste ripe. We will remove them now while they are green to avoid any risk of them getting picked in October by accident.

Back in Barrel

Sunday we were back in the winery to get our 2008 Cabernet back into barrel. Our friend Ingrid came to help. This job can be done by one person, Jerry Anderson did it himself for many years, but with three it's really easy and fast.

Stef did clean up and managed the hose out of the tanks. Ingrid managed the house into the barrels, and I took care of hooking up the hoses and working the pump. In all it just took us about 2 hours from start to finish. Most of that time is actually just waiting for the barrel to fill since I run the pump as slow as possible. I don't want to pump the wine too hard, I'm after about the same force as it would be with gravity.

Ghillie came to visit us in the winery. She's getting very big now, and explores on her own. She learned another lesson in becoming a good winery dog. "Water with citric acid tastes bad"! We leave a bucket with some citric acid to disinfect metal fittings as we remove them from the tanks and pumps. Sophie knows not to stick her head in any water buckets in the winery, and she generally avoids being inside if the pump is running, but Ghillie is just learning that.


We still have to go through 'dog puke season'. Dogs can't really digest grapes, but they eat them anyway. Sophie still does it, although less last year than in the past. I'm sure Ghillie will insure we have the hoses turned on on the crushpad at all times this year.

Below our fearless winemaker shows off her handy work in realigning the storage cabinets in the winery.


The wine was very good. The tannins I worried about so much last year are ripe and smooth. There are lots of them, but the wine is still pleasant, and there's really great complex fruit. We're excited on how the 2008's are coming along.

2008's Checked and Racked

Yesterday we spent the day in the winery racking and testing our 2008 wines.

Racking is the process of moving wine from one container to another (barrel to barrel or barrel to tank back to barrel). Racking has two goals. First we're trying to get the wine clear of any cloudiness, solids, or debris. The 'gunk' will settle into the bottom of a barrel and this process takes the clean wine off the gunk. It also allows us to expose the wine to some air, which will help with any sulfur reduction and help soften tannins.

The Pinot Noir and Haut Tubee had already been racked in April, so we just checked on them for problems. Both had good SO2 numbers and no off odors. We decided to leave both of those batches alone.

The SO2 numbers on our Cabernets were also good, we made just a small addition. We had one stinky barrel that I'll discard now, but the wine was fine. We racked everything into an Argon filled tank, and will put it back in barrel on Sunday. It went very smoothly and we were still able to entertain two groups of visitors around all the work.

It was also a good pre-harvest check on our training program. It wasn't a hard day at all, just 5-6 walks up the hill at Chaine d'Or and 6-7 hours on our feet. Nothing like a picking day at harvest, more like a prep day when you are getting ready to pick. I think Stef and I both did really well with no fatigue and we were able to join friends for dinner last night and tasted 19 bottles of great Santa Cruz Mountains wine until past midnight.