Winery & Tasting Room
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!
Back in January I wrote a detailed blog about pruning the vines in the backyard:
I’ve been meaning to get an update together to show the results of the pruning and supply the ‘why’ to what we did.
This is the before on one of the vines that I described as a part three year old part four year old vine.
This is the same vine today with fruit hanging in what is called the fruit zone and the shoots going up into the trellis system.
This us the entire vine and some charcoal for the smoker in front of the hot tub. The green growth has created a curtain of leafs with the fruit hanging below.
This was a head trained vine that we were trying to retrain into a Cordon and Spur VSP trained vine.
This is the same vine with new cordons established. There’s a little less fruit on this vine at this stage. Next year with the retraining complete, it will look like the vine above.
Changing the training on a vine is tricky and requires a lot of experience and understanding of how a vine grows. If you have that though the results can be great.
The world has strange karma.
It wasn’t more than 24 hours after I published this rant about public wine events and compared them to rock concerts that Colleen from Rock and Roll Wine invited us to their big event of the year – Wine Amplified.
We attended one RnR Wine event before and really had a great time. They’ve invited us back a few other times but we just could not fit it in our schedule. With harvest looking like it’s running late this year though, the last weekend in September opened up for us. Part of why I really like this event is that Chris Hammond, the promoter, does treat the wineries like we’re an attraction. He only asks that we bring enough wine to be able to pour through the event, no fees. He puts together great shows, great venues and does an awesome job.
The wine industry is struggling so hard to figure out how to market to people under 35. People in the industry ask me a lot on my ideas and how we’ve been successful at it and my answer is always the same: “You should talk to Chris Hammond, he’s the freaking genius of wine marketing to people under 35.”
I also really enjoy working with Colleen La Prade. She handles all the winery coordination and is about 50 times more organzied and professional than any other organizer we’ve ever worked with. “Colleen I need someone to ship too, Colleen can I get help pouring, Colleen we need a room?” – The answer is always either, “No problem I’ve already got that set up , or give me 24 hours and I’ll get that set up”.
The headline act this year is Third Eye Blind and the concert will be on the beach at Mandalay Bay. We will be in the main beach area pouring, and Colleen has set up some help for us so we can visit more with people at the table. There are special room rates at Mandalay Bay and the Luxor.
Please let us know if you’re coming! It will be a great party!
Paul has been bantering online about the value of using the term Meritage on a label. He came up with Monkey Butt Cuvee as an alternative and we had a few good laughs over it.
At least Monkey Butt can be pronounced and there is no wondering what it means. It’s not a great example, but what does Meritage mean?
Nevermind what it means, if you don’t know, it’s not a big deal and you are not alone. I don’t like it for one reason and one reason only, it alienates a good portion of the wine-buying population and makes wine that much scarier to the uninitiated.
Wine is a beautiful accompaniment to food, on it’s own, for every day consumption, or for special occasions. You can make it a big deal or it can be casual. You can buy all the accessories, the fancy stemware, sexy openers, and blown glass decanters, or you can unscrew the top of your favorite bottle and pour it into just about any vessel to imbibe.
Whatever you choose, the one thing that wine should not do is confound, confuse, or intimidate you. It is my opinion that the word Meritage does those things.
The most valuable lesson I learned in a public speaking course was “know your audience” and so I’m not going to overly criticize those wineries that use Meritage on their labels, because they are speaking to their audience.
At Stefania Wine, we will not label any of our red blends as Meritage, but do watch for a version of Haut Tubee Monkey Butt Cuvee, or maybe MBC since I bet TTB has a field day with “Butt” on the label…
I love that song. Every road trip we ever takes starts out with me humming it.
We’re just about eight weeks away from harvest starting for us. It’s time to open training camp. That’s how I’m going to think of it anyway. I actually wrote a blog about 49ers training camps when I was growing up. The 49ers start training camp next week so it seems like a good parallel for Harvest Training Camp.
We had done pretty good through the spring and early summer with staying up on the gym. July we took a lazy break of about three weeks. I’m not sure how lazy it actually was, we had vineyard work and winery work during that time, but we hadn’t visited the gym in 3 weeks.
Starting this past Monday though I was back on the exercise bike. My plan is to ride it every day until September 8th. Just taking off Sunday each week. Not long rides, just 30 -60 minutes each day. We’ve started up the hike schedule as well and are trying to get in 2-3 a week.
The goal is to build up the endurance we’ll need for harvest. I’ve been focusing on heart rate while I’m on the bike and trying to keep it at 120-125. Leg strength and stamina is really what gets you through harvest so the bike and hiking are perfect.
Usually its not a good idea to exercise every day. The body really does better with some days off to recover, but I think this training camp approach. like the NFL uses, should work well. We start traveling on September 8th, about the same time NFL teams will get out of their training routine and into regular season routines. We will do the same. We’ll cut back on gyms and hikes then and use our energy for harvest days. The rest will be in between those busy days and we’ll only hike or gym when we see stretches longer than 3-4 days between the busy harvest days.
My hope is that I personally come out a little less tired in November than I did last year. We made it through the harvest great, and I never felt worn out, but by late November we were worn down. I hope this approach, planning on building continual endurance, then planning on rest periods during harvest, will mean less fatigue at the very end.
I’m under the sneaking suspicion that Paul thinks if he mentions Salma Hayek enough times in his blog that she might actually show up! I’m his wife, I’m supposed to support those dreams and fantasies right? Well, I humor him anyway… (wink, wink)
Anyway, to continue the rant somewhat, the other day on our way to the antique show in Moss Landing, we passed a church that was advertising for an upcoming arts and craft fair. It was $25 for the artists to set up a table at the event. I thought, this is what Paul is complaining about. The artist/crafter at least has the potential to make $25 in sales to cover the cost of the table while he/she is at the event. It’s not guaranteed, but at least they can sell their wares at the table.
The best we can do at a wine event is hope we sell wine to a future customer because you are most definitely not allowed to sell at the event. No no no. Sure people sign up for the mailing list, cards are exchanged, hands are shaken, but most people coming by are there for the fun of the event, not the opportunity to buy or obtain wine they’ll never see on the supermarket shelf.
I’m not sure what else to add to that – it’s not a fully formed thought, maybe that’s all I have.
This morning while getting coffee at Espresso City, the owner asked if we would like to host a tasting on his patio one night after work. Heck yes! But…I need to call ABC and find out how to get him a temporary alcohol license, otherwise, no go.
Tomorrow night we are pouring at non-profit event and donating our time and wine to a cause we both support personally. The winery gets the write-off but that’s not the point of attending. We are there to support our community – and if we’re lucky, Salma Hayek will come by and say hello…
We’ve been invited to pour at Sabor Del Valle in San Jose – check out the flyer and follow the link at the bottom if you’re interested in attending. Paul and I have been actively following the Latino Art Community so this is a great opportunity for us to participate locally and share our art too.
http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e2wuweb0aab20bb3
I took Friday off. Actually, I took the entire weekend off now that I think about it. And it felt gooood.
Friends of friends were visiting from Virginia so we piled into two cars and drove over to the coast. After goofing off trying to fly a kite at Gazos Creek beach access, we drove up to Pescadero and had lunch at Duartes. Best crab sandwich in over 20 years. Just sayin’.
Visited the Harley Goat Farm and treated myself to some homemade soaps, 4 different cheeses, brown eggs, and wildflower honey. I didn’t think that anything could top the crab sandwich, but this was by far the highlight of of the weekend. I’m a Capricorn, and love goats…go figure.
On Saturday, we confirmed our participation at the Las Vegas Rock N Roll wine event for September. I’ll have more info. on that soon. If you’re interested, it’s Saturday the 25th at Mandalay Bay. Rock On!
Sunday we got stuck in traffic on our way to Moss Landing for the Antique Show…it was on the list of things I’d like to do, but after staying out late Friday AND Saturday night (oooh), I was in no mood to wake up early just to look at old stuff. It wasn’t too cold, damp, or foggy but it was cold, damp and foggy. Found some small Bauer pieces I almost bought, but nothing that stood out that I just had to have. Maybe next time.
I’m stupefied that July is wrapping up already…is summer ever going to get here? I know the folks back east are sweltering, but someone needs to turn off the a/c out here already.
More poppies keep popping up! This is Paul’s favorite flower, so when I see them coming up I make sure to point them out to him. It’s the simple things in life, yes? Keeps him from ranting too much…
Also in the vineyard, veraison! I need to look back through the vineyard notebooks to be sure, but I think we’re about two weeks behind “normal” for our estate vineyard here in San Jose.
I asked Stefania that via email at lunch today. She said just “as long as you alternate the rants and don’t bash the industry too much”.
I had this posting in mind:
http://stefaniawine.blogspot.com/2010/04/public-events.html
It explained why we won’t do public tasting events any more. Since that posting we’ve been invited to about a dozen public events. I think it’s time to modify our policy some. We will only do public events that do not charge the winery to attend. Of course that’s like saying we’ll only give away free wine to people named Salma Hayek who stop by our house. We’re pretty sure Selma is not dieing to stop by, and a public wine event that doesn’t charge the wineries is about as rare as having a Hollywood starlet come by for a visit.
I was thinking about that reading the Rolling Stone last night. Which by the way the Rolling Stone has the very best political and foreign affairs writing in the country today. Even if you don’t like the political views, no other publication comes close to the depth and impact of the reporting going on at the Stone. Anyway, back to the main rant, there was a column on all the summer rock festivals.
It got me thinking. Do they charge the rock bands to play at those events? Do the promoters tell the bands: “We’ve got a huge audience of your target market lined up to come, just give us $10000 and we’ll charge them $50 each and let you play for them”?
The wine is the attraction at a wine tasting isn’t it? If you had a wine tasting with no wine, would anyone attend? It just seems we’ve been doing it backwards in the wine industry for a long time.