Month: July 2011

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Tucking and Thinning at Chaine d’Or

Saturday Millie had been tucking and thinning at Chaine d’Or when we went and pulled her away to inspect the new Brauns vineyard.

Yields will be very low again due to shatter and poor fertility of the nodes.  Fertility is determined the year before (2010).  The nodes where new growth will come from need lots of sunshine before flowering to be fertile and last year there was little sun in the vineyard in May and June.  So, fog in 2010 effects yield in 2011.

Shatter can have many causes.  This year the two big issues where rain and cold during flowering.  Grapes self pollinate .  In the late Spring and early summer small flowers open up on the clusters.  The flower then drops pollen on to the base and the grape is pollinated and will form into maturity.  The weather needs to be warm and calm.  Cold weather will keep the pollen from releasing.  Stormy weather will disrupt the dropping of the pollen.  We had cold weather and rain during flowering.  Above you can see what happens.  The cluster ends up with just a few grapes on the cluster.  It looks like the cluster has been ‘shattered’ and the grapes have fallen off.

What we really needed to get done though was tucking and thinning.  Tucking is making sure that the growth is up and into the wire system.  This insures the plants get the right amount of sun and that we can get mildew spray on the vines.  You actually tuck the shoots up into the wires.  Thinning is removing any excess growth so that there is good airflow (which prevents mildew) and sun access for the shoots that remain.

It was clear on Saturday that there was more work than Millie and I could finish on our own on Sunday.  The regular crew would still be working in Saratoga so we did something we have not done in a few years.  We sent out an email to friends asking for emergency help.  Amber, Dave and Wes came out to help Millie, Stefania and I on a warm Sunday.

Here’s what a row looks like before we start, note the fog hanging over the ridge line a mile away:

And after thinning:

Nice and cleaned up.  We worked until 2PM, and Dave’s new work out routine made him the star tucker and thinner of the day.  In all we finished 12 of the 22 rows.  They were the longest ones though and Millie and I were able to finish the other 10 the next day.

 

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Vineyard Visits

Saturday Stefania and I went out to visit vineyards and check on how things are going.  We’d normally do this around the 4th of July but we were out of town unexpectedly.

First stop was the Peacock Vineyard.  This would actually be the best vineyard we visited.  Everything was very clean and there was good fruit set.

The rows were in great shape and healthy with no signs of mildew.  I’m estimating we’ll get 1500-2000 pounds of Cabernet Franc from this vineyard.

We’re excited to have the Cabernet Franc.  Stef’s wanted to make a Cab Franc since we started making wine.  We’ll also likely do a blend of Cab Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon with some of the grapes.

Next stop was at Crimson Clover.  At 9 AM we still had fog overhead.  This is a familiar picture above of the back of El Toro.

The rows looked nice but fruit set was light.  We’re expecting the same yield here as in 2008.  There was shatter in the vineyard and a low number of clusters.

We had one little surprise in the vineyard, the tiny birds nest with an egg in it on this small vine.

Our third stop was at the Red Hen vineyard which has been full of vigor.  There was about 400 pounds of Merlot here.  We’ll need to come back and do some more thinning.

And the red rooster and red hen stopped by to say hello.

Next stop was at the Copenhagen vineyard.  We had a crew of seven there thinning and tucking the vineyard.

The crew had finished about have the rows when we came by.  We’ll have to spray for mildew again here but otherwise it looked good.  Fruit set here was just ok as well.

You can see the little blue Toyota in the background here and Stef and Jerry talking in the row.  We ran to Chaine d’Or next to pick up Millie who was thinning there and then went together to a new vineyard above Los Altos we’re taking on.  I stopped taking pictures though as we were busy taking notes and coming up with a vineyard plan.

Everything looked pretty good, but yields will be very light again this year.  Down 40% from 2009 I think, which was our last ‘normal year’.

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Sabor Del Valle Recap

band

Friday night we poured wine at Sabor Del Valle for the second year in a row. We enjoyed this charity event last year and we were looking forward to doing it again this year. The event is at the San Jose History Park in Kelley Park and it was a beautiful evening. It just takes us 5 minutes or so to set up so Stefania got to go visit some of the other wineries:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is really great food at this event and lots of seating which is very nice for a wine event.  I really liked the fish empanadas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was also some really nice local art .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the highlights was this band that strolled through the park for the first hour of the event.  Then there was more live music and dancing until well after sunset.

band

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great time again and look forward to doing this event again next year.

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Wine Amplified – Rock and Roll Wine

Saturday September 17th we will be pouring at our only public event for the year. This will be the second year in a row we are attending Wine Amplified by Rock and Roll Wine on the Beach at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The headline band will be Train. For more event details and ticket information see:

http://www.wineamplified.com/

For the event we have a full cabana at Mandalay Bay with room for up to 12 people to hang out and watch the concert. We don’t really consider this a promotion trip as much as a great concert and a really fun time. This year we’d really like to open the cabana up to friends to hang out with us. No extra charges or strings, just show up and drink wine with us in the cabana. It’s really a great experience and we’ve asked for a cabana next to the stage. If your interested and will be in Las Vegas drop us a note.

We’ll be sending out a note via email to our mailing list members as well. We hope you can make it. It’s really a great event!

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Our Most Expensive Wine Ever

Saturday I had a full day of work to do in the winery.  All of the barrels needed topping and that takes a couple of hours.  I also was going to bottle the 2010 Chardonnay from the Chaine d’Or Estate.

This was going to be a hand operation since I estimated (correctly) there were only about 10 cases.

Here’s the sad story of the 2010 Chardonnay.  Last year the growing season was cold and foggy at Chaine d’Or well into July.  We were worried that the grapes would never get ripe.  So in mid-July we took the very expensive step of removing all the leafs from the fruit zone to try and get more sun to the clusters.  There were many vineyards doing the same thing.

In early August things seemed ok and it looked like we might be able to pick in October.  We also noticed though that Mildew was starting in the vineyard.  The late verasion had increased the risk of mildew so we were prepared.  We went out and did two treatments, the first with an organic product called Oxidate, and then a week later with Stylet oil.

We zapped the mildew, no problem.  We also left a nice shinny sheen on the grapes for the hottest unexpected August heat wave in memory.  Without leafs the clusters had no protection and baked in the heat.

We knew there would be only a few hundred pounds in the vineyard.  When we eventually did pick we used just the ‘A’ team and it took about four times as long to pick.  They only picked good clusters.  Stefania and I set up a table and as the 30 pound bins came in from the field we hand sorted each cluster and then cut out the bad grapes with scissors.  Grape by grape.

When it was all done we had about 25 gallons of wine.  It was really good, and I put it in a small barrel to age before transferring to a tank for bottling.  We knew though we could never sell this wine.  The cost we estimated was about $165 a bottle for us to produce it.

Stefania decided she wanted it though and we would bottle it for our own use.  She really wants it for her Crab Feed party so that’s what the plan is.

This is the tank lifted up to help the wine flow for hand bottling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first picture is the hand corker I used. I filled each bottle one at a time and corked them with some left over 2008 corks.  No labels for this wine, it would have been too expensive to print a small run.

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Back for Business

On July 3rd Stefania and I set out on short notice to Colorado for a family emergency.  We were gone a total ten days.  We made it to Denver in two days and celebrated the 4th of July at a V.F.W. post in Boulder, CO.

It was a very busy and stressful 10 days.  In all we covered 3275 miles on the trip driving I5 to I80 to I25.  We also had a day we had to drive into the high country in Colorado to the Collegiate Peaks area.

It took us longer to get home.  We were both pretty tired and did shorter lengths through Utah and Nevada.  We arrived home Tuesday afternoon and were back to work on Wednesday.  We are a few days behind in emails and of course haven’t been doing any blogs.

I do have a few lined up though and will be writing soon about an upcoming event in Las Vegas, provide an update on distribution and some thoughts on this years odd weather.  Look for those over the next few days.

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Sabor Del Valle

As most of you know we don’t do many events each year. We’ve completely stopped doing any commercial events except for Rock and Roll Wine in Las Vegas (more on that later this month). We do a few charity events. Our criteria is first that it’s a charity we believe in and want to support and second that it’s an event we’ll enjoy. Most that we do are to support the charities that are near and dear to personal friends.

Sabor Del Valle hits on all those counts. It is also a really great time. The food and music are fantastic and there are a number of small tequila makers there, which I really enjoyed sampling. It is also the largest gathering of Latino winemakers that I know of.   Last year Mi Sueno and Ceja were too of the highlights for me to try.

This years event is Friday July 22nd at Kelly Park in San Jose.  Start time is 6PM I believe.

Tickets and more information can be found at:

http://www.sabordelvalle.org/index.html

or on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100001304017240&v=info

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The Tasting Room

Tasting time

We often get asked if we have a tasting room or plan on having one. In fact at the last event we did one woman reacted like we’d lost a loved one when we said: “no”. “Oh, well maybe some day you will, just hang in there” she said.

I have really mixed feelings about the tasting room idea. Well mixed in that I’m 5% for it and 95% against it. It would be nice to have the additional sales outlet and it would probably let us grow sales faster. It would also be nice to have a place to meet friends and host events that wasn’t restricted to the space in our backyard. It would also be great to have a venue where we could feature the art of some of our friends.

The 95%? Well I got this as the lead paragraph in an email this morning from a local winery, I changed some of the names to ‘Blah’ to protect the guilty:

“Why not start the holiday weekend early with us today during our “Time for Wine” Blah Series?! We have “The Chris Blah Band” playing today and “Carlos Blah Music Trio” will be playing on Sunday for “Groovin’ in the Blah.” Don’t forget about scheduling a VIP tour and tasting or playing a game of bocce ball!”

One word, as an after thought about wine. It’s not even directly about wine, it’s about scheduling a VIP tour. That just isn’t our gig. We didn’t start making wine to play bocce ball and groove in the blah. We make wine to make great wine and share it with friends.

That’s a great risk of a tasting room. The venue and the sales from it start to drive what the winery does and the wine you make. The tasting room manager is sure to come to you and say things like: “An $11 Chardonnay would be great, and why don’t we get some of that Almond Champagne.” If someone told me I needed to make an $11 Chardonnay and Almond Champagne I’d kick them in the shin, not go along with the idea.

“Let’s host bridezilla” comes next and then you find yourself avoiding your own facility because you hate everyone hanging out there. So don’t shed a tear when we say “no we don’t have a tasting room”. There’s a reason we don’t. We like our customers, we consider them friends, and we want to keep it that way.