Rain, Drought, and Water Worries

This has been one of the driest years I can remember.  Right now in San Jose rainfall is at about 40% of a normal year.  We’ve only had a couple of good storms go through.  Mostly when we have had rain though it has been a light drizzle more than real rain.  The winter months of December, January and February had almost no rain at all.

The natural question to ask is how will this effect the vines and potentially the grape harvest in 2012.  The answer is – not very much.  The vines are dormant in the winter so not using any water.  Rain during that time is important to build up reserves for the dry summer months in the soil, but not important for the plants at that time.

I took the picture below on Wednesday of the Mourvedre vines in the front yard.  They are just starting to wake up and grow.  Now is when they need rain and water and right now we are getting regular little storms.  It’s been more than enough for the vines right now.  It has also been cool with highs in the low 60’s.  That means the plants will be growing slowly and don’t  need a bunch of water just yet.  It also means there is no risk of mildew since mildew needs temps to be over 70 degrees.

Another good side effect we will see this year is that the lack of rain has kept growth down between the rows.  You can see that in the picture below.  At this time last year the cover crop was a foot tall.  Those cover crops, and weeds compete with the vines for water, and this year those plants are small and won’t offer much competition.  Last year we had to mow three times in most vineyards and some weeds grew to 5 feet high.  This year we’ll likely mow just once or twice and it doesn’t look like anything will be over 18 inches tall.

We can’t count on the perfect timing of the rain though through the rest of the year and the amount of water in the soil is going to be an issue if we don’t get a lot of rain in April and May.  That’s why we have drip systems though and we can turn them on if we need them.  We usually don’t have them on so there will be some additional work we’ll have to do to get them ready before we can use them.  This means turning them on and walking every row to see where they have gotten leaks since we lasted used them and fixing the leaks.

So we’re not really worried about the rain shortage or drought at all.  Drought years like 2007 and 2009 have turned out to be some of the easiest farming years we’ve had, and produced great wines.  If we have to turn on the drip systems we’ll have additional costs in water and maintenance.  Those should be more than offset though in the savings from mowing and weed control.  Look for an update on the rain situation in May.  That’s when we will decide about turning on the drip systems or not.

Testing Yourself

Stefania had this idea to host a blind tasting of our wines and compare them to others in the area.  She narrowed it down to Cabernet and decided to focus on a single vintage (2007).  It took some time to pull together but we finally did it on Friday March 16th.

All of the following were served blind in flights of three. The wines were bagged by Jaye and as new wines came in they were mixed in the number rotation so that the ‘new’ wines would not all be the end numbers. Each wine was opened about 45 minutes prior to serving but not decanted. Foils were all removed and wines were served in numbered bags.

Original notes are as I took them down. Thoughts after bags were removed are in parenthesis. I used + when I though a wine’s future score would likely be higher and many of these ended up with a +.

#1 2007 Mount Eden Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Rich, chocolate and classic cab nose. Tannic, lighter on the palate. Should be rockin in 10 years 94+ My WOTN

#2 2007 Cooper Garrod George’s Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dusty, light fruit, clean but just ok 87 pts (much less impressive than a previous bottle I had)

#3 2007 Chaine d’Or, Santa Cruz Mountains
Big green nose, rich, round and tannic, lots of hidden fruit, berry , needs 10+ years 89+

#4 2007 Kathryn Kennedy ‘Small Lot’, Santa Cruz Mountains
Wood influence, spice, red fruit, lighter texture. From a warmer site? Martin Ranch? 89 (Most of the small lot fruit comes from Martin Ranch)

#5 2007 Ridge Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains
American oak on the nose. Very tannic with great balance, light fruit, long finish with berry. 90+

#6 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Less wood, I like this one. Cherry pie, little funky on the finish, greenish tannins, guess of a cooler site 89+

# 72007 P•M Staiger, Santa Cruz Mountains
Sour cherry nose, low oak influence, slight volitile, peppery with light fruit 82 (The only wine I really didn’t care for)

#8 2007 La Honda Lonehawk Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains
Musty, mushroom, slight volitile on nose but well balanced. Finishes oaky. 88. Might be better in 5 years but VA worries me.

#9 2007 Stefania, Santa Cruz Mountains
Big nose, good balance of wood. Best balanced in this group of three with tannin/acid/fruit. Smooth, round, warm site? 92

# 10 2007 Ahlgren Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Green nose, smooth black fruit and good balance, cool site? 89+

# 11 2007 Stefania Uvas Creek Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
Round, spicy, mushroom, great balance and plum fruit. Not especially ‘cabby’ but I like this 91

# 12 2007 Woodside Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Greenish nose, and pepper flavor, short and tannic 85

# 13 2007 Thomas Fogarty, Santa Cruz Mountains
Slight pepper, roundish, black fruit, bright green tint stays through the wine. 5+ years 90+

# 14 2007 Domaine Eden, Santa Cruz Mountains
Menthol nose, balanced, light oak, black pepper and red fruit 92

# 15 2007 House Family Vineyards, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dusty and black pepper, grows on you with good balance. A little funk but nice length. Warmer site? 91+

# 16 2007 Ridge Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Rich nose with some gren. Sharp red frui, cooler site? Nose of #3 without the ‘balls’. 88

#17 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Dos Rios Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
Woody from a great barrel, Pessec Leognan nose. Dusty, balanced and round. A ‘wow now’ wine with tons of fruit. 93

# 18 2007 Creekview Vineyards, Santa Clara Valley
Funky mint nose. CHalky not roundest of the group has mint without pepper, good finish 88

Everyone voted on thier top three with 5 points for 1st, 3 for 2nd and 1 for third. Group winners where:

1st = #17 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Dos Rios Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
2nd = #1 2007 Mount Eden Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
3rd = #5 2007 Ridge Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains
4th (tie) = #9 2007 Stefania, Santa Cruz Mountains
#3 2007 Chaine d’Or, Santa Cruz Mountains

I also posted this at:

http://forums.winespectator.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3146091161/m/5677060432

You can read comments there and get links to notes from others at the dinner.

Pick Up Day

Saturday turned out to be a rainy day at the winery in Woodside.  We had hoped to set up on the front patio by the pool.  The plan was to put out a table with all the wines we’d be pouring and have the Pizza oven in the round about serving hot pizza.

The rain forced us inside though.  The pizzas had to be heated as we needed them and we poured wine from the kitchen of the main house.  With rain and the steep road we thought attendance might be low but we ended up with about 40-50 people stopping by.

I took this picture before we got started.  Stefania and Jaye behind the counter.  I spent a lot of time washing glasses but did get to talk to a fair number of people.  We will probably do the fall pick up closer to home and I think this will have been the only time we will open the winery this year.

Pink Slime

A few months ago I told Stefania we should start a new blog called “Slow and Hard”. She laughed and thought what you just did.

Every ad, every stir and smile tv cook and every commercial on tv for food seems to use the phrase “Fast and Easy.” They leave out the “Crappy” part. It should be “Fast, Easy and Crappy”. As in: “Show your family how much you care by serving this wonderful soup that is ‘fast, easy and crappy'”. Good food is slow and hard. It means some level of commitment by someone to not cut a corner and make it crappy.

A few years ago we stopped buying ground beef. We knew no one was grinding up chuck in the back of the store anymore and the process to make what was being sold commercially was gross.  I also have been on this kick about respect the animal.  I like to name all our meat.  That freaks some people out but if I call the chicken ‘Max’, it just seems more respectful to the chicken.  Max gave up his life so we could eat.  Respect Max.  Eating Max as a chicken nugget at KFC is disrespectful to Max and chickens in general.

Eating ground beef that has gone through a centrifuge and been mixed up with 100’s of other cows is disrespectful to the cow.  Plus it tastes like crap.  Honestly it’s mostly that it tastes like crap.  We grind everything ourselves.  It’s slow and hard.  Well not really, to grind 3 pounds of meat takes a total of about 10 minutes from set up to clean up.  There is an attachment to the Kitchen Aid mixer that works super well.  The end product is hugely superior to anything we’d bought in a package in years.

Me worry about Pink Slime?  No way!  We’re eating Maribelle right now and she was a good cow.  Happy and active.  We have a picture of her up on our fridge.  She’s really yummy too.

Shipping Update

We have been shipping out orders from the Spring release for about a week now. We are holding the southeastern U.S. due to the heat wave there but everything else looks open. The release included 2009 Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon, 2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and 2006 Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon.

As usual we have to ship in small batches. We are not big enough to get a regular pick up from UPS so we have to be able to fit everything in the back of our car to run to UPS. Since we stage shipping out of the garage, which is also small, we can handle about 30 cases a day maximum. We do expect to have everything out that is not on a weather hold though in 2-3 weeks.

We’re shipping east coast orders on Thursday and Friday now. That holds it over weekend west of the Rockies which is cooler than holding it east of the Rockies. Those shipments have to over weekend somewhere and we feel better about having it in the west which is cool right now. There still is enough wine to fill orders. We’re very low on the Uvas and Crimson but can still take orders on both.

Pick Up Day Saturday March 24th

Pick up day for the Spring Release is this Saturday from 11-3. Here’s the ‘official’ invite:

We would like to invite you this weekend to the winery to taste wines from our current release We will also feature complimentary brick oven pizza from our friends at Mario’s Mobile Pizza.

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=welcome#!/pages/Marios-Mobile-Pizza-llc/352590774772822

When: Saturday, March 24th
Time: 11a.m. – 3p.m.
Where: Chaine d’Or Winery, Woodside
Directions: http://www.chainedor.com/directions.html

We will be pouring wines from our Spring Release:

2009 Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon, $44
2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon, $40
2006 Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Library Release, $40

This is a residential location, parking is limited to the street area. This will likely be the only time we will be open this year. If you have an order from the Spring Release it will be available for pick up. We hope you can join us and we look forward to visiting with you again!

For more information about our wines, you can also visit our website, www.stefaniawine.com

Paul & Stefania

Vineyard Worker to be Named Later

Over the last few years we’ve made an effort to take Sunday off from work. Even during fall harvest time we try and keep one day when we can rest and recover. I’ve always been a football fan and Dad would take us to 49er practices and games well before Joe Montana and Jerry Rice made the Niners a great team.

Stefania has gotten to be an even bigger fan though and she insisted that last year we get the NFL package on Directv. That way we could watch the Saints, Broncos, Bears and Seahawks also. She like to follow the teams of cities we visit often or have been to games at.

Well the news this week had been buzzing about Payton Manning coming to the 49ers. He decided on the Broncos though and Denver quickly announced they would try and trade Tim Tebow. That’s when the staff around here got worried. Stef likes Tebow, and the odds of any NFL team trading anything for him seem pretty low. I bet we could get John Elway to trade him for a vineyard worker to be named later. Millie and Jaye were both worried we might offer one of them to the Broncos for Tebow. After all there is no need to throw anything when working in the vineyards or winery so he has the right skills.

That’s my way of reminding everyone Millie is back working with us and Jaye decided she likes this new job and stayed with us after trying the job out last fall. We’re a crew of six now.

Vineyard Visits

Saturday morning we went out to inspect several vineyards and put together the work orders for the next few weeks.  Jaye was with us mostly so I could show her the way to Peacock Vineyard.  I didn’t take any pictures at Peacock but things looked great there.  The homeowner does the pruning themselves and we just have a little correction and clean up to do.

Next we were on to Crimson Clover.  This also looked really good and the vines are really healthy and starting to get thick at the trunk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third stop of the day (after a bathroom stop at home) was at the little Red Hen Vineyard.  This was the first place we saw bud break.  We put in some flags there to mark spots where we want Millie to install additional posts.  The vineyard was pretty vigorous last year and the vines need more posts to hold up the wires that hold up the growth.  Stef had already bought the posts so we were just marking out the install points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our final stop was at the Brauns vineyard to check on the Pinot Noir Vines there.  Bud break was also starting and I took the picture below.  We have a few grow tubes to install on smaller plants.  We took this vineyard over last year and I think it has suffered from over watering.  The vines are scrawny for their age which is a sign to me the roots have not gone deep.  That happens when the plants are getting all their water from a drip system at the surface.  We’ll work this year to correct that.

Here’s one of the plants that’s furthest along.  We’ll also try and limit fruit production here this year so that the plant can work on its strength.

Overall we were really happy with how everything looked and the work that’s been done so far this year.  The crew will be busy over the next few weeks on the tasks we’ve put together.

The Best Car Ever

Our little Toyota FJ Cruiser is a regular item in our blog postings. Pictures, especially of the time and temperature are featured in all kinds of posts.

We bought the car in February of 2007. It’s very first road trip was that May. We drove up to Oregon to visit a few Pinot Noir producers we liked. 2007 was our first year making Pinot Noir and we wanted to pick the brains of people who made it the way we liked it.

We’ve used the car to move barrels, one fits in the back perfectly. We also use it to move cases of wine. We can get in about 20 cases from the warehouse, or about 15 packages to go to UPS. It also hauls us to vineyard sites and can get up any road we throw at it no matter how rough.

It passed 91000 miles this month and the title showed up. It’s paid for. No major problems. The front end suspension needs a tune up that will run about $400 and we put new tires on it at 50,000 miles. Other than that it’s been regular maintenance. It still gets just about 19-20 miles to the gallon on gas.

The topper is I went to check Blue Book value on the car after a friend mentioned how much he saw used cars FJ’s selling for. I was blown away. With our miles and condition the retail is $19,200. I paid $23,500 for it new. We’re not planning on selling it anytime soon though. It’s been a great car and a key part of making Stefania Wine go.

Much Needed Time Off (the art of doing nothing)

Paul was off from the day job December 23rd to January 2nd so we declared that Stefania Wine was closed for business that week too.  Even though Jaye put in a couple of days baiting gophers and running a couple of errands, we were shut down.

We stayed in the Bay Area, visited with friends and family and even drove over to Half Moon Bay and Pillar Point to fetch crabs off the dock.

The key challenge for us both was to sit still and vow to ignore the numerous tasks that have accumulated during the year.  Sure the outside of the house needs a fresh coat of paint, and the citrus need pruning as do the roses, but none of those are critical have-to’s that we can’t insert into the calendar for this year.

Instead of chores, we spent a lot of time on the deck reading back issues of National Geographic that stacked up during the last quarter and bird watching.  Each afternoon the robins would invade a neighboring tree, and the cedar waxwings made an appearance along with red headed finch.  Our annual visitor “Frederick” is a yellow warbler and the past few years he’s been back with a mate.  Then later, just as the sun was close to setting, Phoebe came by to bug hunt.

Once the sun went down, the back got pretty chilly so we grabbed a couple of throw blankets and fired up the propane heater.  It was mild enough that we stayed out there pretty late one night, Paul grilled a steak and we ate by candle light. By the time we headed back indoors, it was well past 10 o’clock.

I had one chore that was necessary, putting the Christmas tree away.  After that, it was off to Ranch99 to fetch groceries and pick up Dim Sum for a late breakfast.

The reason I’ve been able to post up several blogs in the past few days with so many photos is that over the course of several days and evenings spent watching football, I finally organized the digital pics from 2011.  I had to buy a new desktop computer last Spring and that’s when my files went out of control.  Some were still on my phone, some on a travel camera, the rest on the laptop, etc.  I corralled them all onto the portable back up drive and organized them.

Paul played chess on his computer, I started two knitting projects, we read books and magazines, bbq’d and opened some great wine, entertained friends and family, drove to the coast for lunch, did a little bit of shopping, did a lot of unwinding.  It was the best vacation in a long time.

As we reflected on 2011, we both realized it was nice to stay home for a change and do nothing.