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When I was a teenager I had an issue with the late afternoon classes. They interrupted Surfing.

My favorite spot to go was Seascape beach, about 10 miles south of Santa Cruz. It’s not a hot shot surfing spot, but I enjoyed the rugged hike in, the beach was mostly empty, the waves were good, and a school of dolphins patrolled regularly. There really isn’t anything more peaceful than sitting on a surf board in the cool Pacific, watching the sun set, and having dolphins swim all around you.

15 years ago or so a resort went in at Seascape. It’s not as rugged now or isolated, but I still like coming here. It’s only about 15 minutes away from the Woodruff Family Vineyard, so Stefania and I decided to stay here over night while we pick Pinot Noir.

Today we picked for Bradley Brown and Big Basin Vineyards and Pax Mahle for his new project. Tomorrow we will pick for ourselves. The day wasn’t too long, started at 7 and finished at 2:30. We’ll actually have a little break to enjoy the beach tonight.

I worked hard picking, sorting and hiking the hill today so just took a few pictures:

The crew getting started on Pax Mahle’s grapes.

Working the center section of the vineyard for Bradley Brown. Bradley spent the morning with us and it was good to be able to talk with him some.

Seascape when we got back 🙂

From yesterday in the Arastadero Vineyard. This is a Syrah vineyard we manage for Big Basin Vineyards. It is so steep that only Stef and I, plus Jerry, his wife, brother and sister, harvested. I didn’t trust anyone else in the vineyard.

Bradley was super happy with the fruit. We took this over this year, and he said it’s the best fruit he has gotten from this vineyard. We also farmed it 100% organic for him.

Normally you would use a forklift and tractor to move bins. In this vineyard it is so steep the picking bins have to be carried out by hand and dumped by hand into the waiting truck.

Back to today’s pictures. The crew snacking after we had finished for the day. There’s lots of fun in translation. I tell Stef what I want done. She uses a combination of English and Spanish to make sure Jerry understands, and he then tells the crew in Spanish.

Jerry is great though. He’s the kind of person you just tell him what solution you want, and he figures out a way to make it happen.

More of the crew picking away. I probably picked 15-16 bins today, Stef picked about 30. We got Bradley about 60% of what he hoped for, but he said the fruit looked and tasted excellent. He was very happy with what he got, he just wished there was more.

Still more random photos. We drove up to Eaglepoint Ranch on Monday afternoon and had a nice dinner with Casey and Lynn. Tuesday morning it was up early for the 5+ hour drive back.

Stef at 6:10 AM getting ready to go.

Part of Casey’s wall of fame. I think he’d actually like to put up pain in the ass winemakers here.

Me pulling out leafs and other MOG as we pick.

This year Casey lost almost 70% of his normal yield. We only got 1 ton.

Stef walking through our section of vines. Last year our section yielded 6200 pounds. This year it was about 700 pounds. Casey cancelled contracts with many producers so a few of us could have what little was left. We ended up picking from 17 rows to get one ton.

The 1989 Block at Eaglepoint. The Sun wasn’t up over the mountain yet when we finished picking.

The mandatory, “Paul driving a truck” picture.

The Golden Gate in sight. Just 2 more hours of driving ahead of us at this point.

This was the night before driving up the road to the Ranch. It’s a bumpy twisty dirt road.

More of me sorting and removing leafs. Casey is paying his crew by the hour this year. He usually pays by the ton. Most growers pay by the 30 lb bucket. His thought is that by the ton, has them work as a team and be more complete in picking. I always pay by the hour. It’s more expensive, but there is less MOG and the vines never need a second pass to pick up what was left.

This is the dividing line between us and Copain. They were picking also Tuesday. We actually got 5 of their rows this year.

Me climbing up on the tractor as we moved to the next spot.

The fruit we got was actually very nice. We sorted it quickly when we got it back to Big Basin, and it was still 59 degrees in the bins. We hope we will end up with about 60 cases total. 2008 will be a tough year for people low on our mailing list. We’re just not going to have a lot of wine to go around.

These won’t be in any kind of logical order either. We left the house yesterday just after 7AM and returned just after 9PM. Day 2 of 8 that we will work all out. Today we have some clean up to do, logistics to coordinate and then up to Eaglepoint Ranch. Tomorrow morning our Syrah will be picked and we’ll be headed back on a 5-6 hours drive to process it. Captions will be above the pictures:

Why is wine expensive? These trucks get 11-12 mpg when loaded with a ton of grapes. Stops at the gas station are frequent.

This is actually the finished must after processing at Big Basin. I was on the sorting table, Stef was watching for any final sorting issues going into bin.

“The Crew”. I thought this picture looked a lot like a Rolling Stone cover for some weird band. From left to right; Our friend and volunteer Noelle, Stefania, Millie, Jerry.

The sun came up over the east mountains as we drove to the vineyard.

Truck, bins and tubs ready to get started.

The crew in the field as the sun starts to hit the vineyard. At this point we were about 1/2 done with the pick.

Stefania in the back of the truck with me sorting. We sort into the picking bins, then again into the 1/2 ton bins, then on a sorting table, and finally on a shacking table. Four sorts in all, and this is after going through the vineyard before harvest and removing problem grapes.

The team at work.

Joe at Big Basin gets a weight for us on a bin. We brought in just over 3200 pounds, or about 4 barrels.

Grapes ready to go to the sorting table.

I liked this view, it showed the mountains in the back. This is the Santa Clara Valley AVA, but you can see we’re really up in the Santa Cruz Mountains here.

Close up of grapes in the bin. They were very impressive. Ripe flavors, good skins, a very good pick. We’re looking forward to a long run in this vineyard.

I’ve been thinking for some time of writing a series of Blogs on how our business plan evolved from planting 50 vines around the hot tub to making 1200 cases in just 8 years. I haven’t really figured out how to put it together, since it’s a long twisty series of events that have lead us here. I do know though that we’re in the middle of an important transition this year.

In 2005 100% of the grapes we used were purchased grapes. We did use some grapes we had grown on our own, but that wine was made at home and not commercially.

In 2006 95% of the grapes we used were purchased and 5% were grown by us. In 2007 that changed again to 65% purchased and 35% grown by us.

This year we will ‘flip’ that number. 30% of our grapes will be purchased, 70% will be grown by us. Eventually I believe we will be at 80-90% grown by us, and 10-20% purchased.

New vineyards have been leased, new projects added, and older plantings are either being restored or coming on line. All these factor give us access to more grapes that we have controlled through out the growing season. That’s really important, because I think we grow great fruit.

This year sees an important part of that transition continue. From 2005-2007 we used Cabernet Sauvignon from the Uvas Creek Vineyard, which we bought each year. This year a vineyard we’ve farmed, the Crimson Clover Vineyard, has come on line at 4 years old and is ready to be harvested this morning. Crimson Clover is near Uvas Creek, in the same AVA, and same band of soil, altitude and training. It is however, farmed by us and will replace Uvas Creek this year.

We’re off in just 10 minutes to start picking grapes from Crimson Clover.

I’m sure any attempt to sort these out would just lead to more time in front of the computer than I want to spend. We got everything done pretty fast today and made it back by 3:30, well ahead of schedule. Stef is making empanadas right now for the crew tomorrow. We may get a trip in to the gym tonight, but more likely I’ll make some pasta and we’ll watch football.

First Picture for Neil in New York’s daughter. Sophie in the winery. This will be her 4th harvest. The first she had to watch in a little pen as she was just a 8 week old puppy.

If you look real hard you can see Jerry removing netting. They started at 7am and finished about 2PM.

Every bottle of Stefania, has some Stefania labor behind it. Here she is loading 1/2 ton bins in the pick up truck.

I lost. I’m the one who had to jump in the bin this year.

The Nielsen’s 17 year old vineyard dog. She just barely makes it outside to check on us and then settles in on the porch.

Stef said I looked like a hippie. We pulled about 200 pounds of Zinfandel from a little backyard vineyard down the street from Crimson Clover. If it turns out ok, it will make its way into the Haut Tubee blend. (That’s a brand new $1200 Seguin Moreau barrel in the background)

More for Neil in New York. Wild Turkeys on the road.

And a young doe in a driveway.

Jerry and Estelle’s son Axle. Mostly when he comes out with them he plays with the dogs. At Chaine d’ Or he swims with Sophie in the pool. He also likes to catch quail and then keeps them as pets. Here he’s looking for nests in the vines.

We leave in 15 minutes to start the day. This morning was actually pretty leisurely. I was up at 6:20 and made coffee and brought in the paper. We’ve worked through the pot and the paper and Stef is getting ready to go now.

Our first stop will be at the Crimson Clover vineyard to drop off bags and boxes to store the bird netting. Jerry has been working there since 7AM. Next we will drive to Chaine d’Or, about 50 miles and load up the two pick up trucks. We’re going to try and get everything in one load. Five 1/2 ton bins, and about 60 30lb picking bins. We’ll bring those down to Crimson Clover.

Next we’ll pick a few hundred pounds of Zinfandel down the street from the Crimson Clover vineyard that will go into the Haut Tubee blend. Than means getting it back to Chaine d’Or for processing. At some point around 3 PM we need to get back to San Jose to pick up a third rental truck for tomorrow.

If all goes well, we should be done by 5PM tonight, although a set back or two could push us back to 8PM.

So much of winemaking is logistics. Getting the right equipment, to the right place, at the right time.

Today will be an Office day for Stefania. I’ll be at work, we gave Jerry the day off.

Tomorrow, we start going full speed, all out, non stop. We’ll be moving bins to the Crimson Clover Vineyard and Jerry and his wife Estelle will be removing the bird netting. Stef and I will try and get all the bins moved in one block with two pick up trucks. We’ll also help with the nets before heading off to pick up a third rental truck.

Sunday we pick. Probably about 1 1/2 tons. Normally I’d say 2+, but yields have been low this year. This vineyard is 4 years old, and next year yields will like be around 3 tons. We’ll also be picking a little Zinfandel for the Haut Tubee blend.

It will be a busy day, shuttling the Cabernet to Big Basin, and processing it there, then the Zinfandel to Chaine d’Or.

Monday Jerry will clean out all the bins, and Stef and I will do more truck swapping. The rental will go back, and my Dad’s truck will go back to him, and we will rent a long bed. Long bed trucks fit two 1/2 ton bins perfectly. Then we drive up to Eaglepoint Ranch. Our pick there is Tuesday, and we drive back to Big Basin. Hopefully things will go well and we should finish by 8PM.

Wednesday we’ll sample the Woodruff Family Vineyard, and likely start picking for Pax Mahle on Thursday or Friday. If the numbers look good we’ll pick for Hobo Wines on Saturday, and Storrs on Sunday. In all we should bring in 6-8 tons in that first rush. If we get through that I’ll likely give everyone Monday the 6th off. I’ll return to work, and everyone will rest for a day.

For our first three releases we had used an efax account to get orders. It worked, was portable, and easy to set up. Last release though I got a number of complaints that faxes did not get through. We also had a couple of bad days around March Madness, when there were huge delays. That combined with a price increase of the efax service made setting up our own machine in the home office.

It also fit with a general direction we’ve been heading in this summer anticipating Stefania working full time on winery tasks. We plan on bringing in a lot of shipping and doing that ourselves, and Stef has spent a few weeks getting all the accounting in order and taken that over. So, having the orders come in on a live fax machine in our office made sense.

Every morning for the last week our little alarm clock goes off. Ring, Ring, Beep, Beep. The fax machine has started for the day. Usually it’s about 6:30, but one morning it was 5:30. Still we don’t mind at all. “Woohoo“, one more order and we get to keep making wine, is the attitude we have.

One more wave of letters to be released still next week. Stef just walked out the door with the box of them to seal up today. She’ll be in the winery doing lab tests and getting mailers ready. Jerry will be hauling barrels to Big Basin, and I’ll be at the day job today.

Today was a fun winery day. We got to head up late afternoon to meet and greet customers from Vermont. Newlywed customers in fact, on the first day of their honeymoon!! Paul walked them thru the vineyard and did the entire winery tour and explanation of things in process. They asked a lot of great questions and had nice things to say about the barrel samples we pulled. I broke a glass as I was demonstrating the bruise line across the tops of my thighs this time of year from moving barrels and other equipment about the winery. Oops.

Before they got there, I had one minor repair to take care of before the next harvest. The wheelbarrow tire was flat. We bought a new one late yesterday afternoon and with some adjusting of parts to make it fit, voila, the wheelbarrow is better than new! Well, the tire is new anyway.

Last quick update before heading back to the Monday night game: the 2nd round of mailers were dropped off at the post office on Saturday. Local folks in California should see them today or tomorrow, the rest of them should arrive in your mailboxes by the end of this week.

If I missed any of the finer points from the day I’m sure Paul will fill in the blanks for me.

From our Chardonnay harvest at Chaine d’Or yesterday.

Grapes coming in in the 30 pound picking bins. I prefer to have the crew sort on the vine and in the field rather than handling the grapes again on a sorting table. This crew did a great job as you can see.

There was a tiny bit (2%) of Botrytis, which should give a little peach and pit fruit note to the finished wine.

Grapes enter the press. Once the press is full, we run it on a gentle 2 hour cycle to press all the juice out and transfer it to a chilled tank to settle. This will separate the solids, or ‘lees’.

For a few years at Chaine d’Or I had the job of lifting the bins into the crusher. This year though I ‘drove’. Making sure that the crusher is working right, running the press and watching after the entire process.

The stems are shooting out of the end of the crusher and the juice and berries are dropping into the press.

We had one MOG emergency. That’s ‘Matter Other than Grapes”. Here a water bottle had been left in a picking bin and gone through the crusher. The bottle shot out the end, here I am watching for the label. I found it and got it out of the must.

And at the end of the day? This is another reason why we had training camp this year. 20 oz bone in Rib Eyes on the grill at the end of a long day.

We’ll be back at the winery today. Finishing clean up and getting the wine into the inside tanks to start fermentation. Once it starts going we’ll transfer the juice into oak barrels to finish fermentation. We should use about 8 barrels total this year. Two new Claude Gillet barrels, two new Sequin Moreau barrels and 4 neutral french oak barrels.