Category: General

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On Line Ordering

We’ve been working on getting an online ordering system up and in place for a little while.  Harvest work, regular work, travel and now pruning have all delayed us being able to work on it.  Today though was a rainy wet and cold day and we called off pruning for the day.  Stefania and I used the time to get caught up on other tasks and I used the time to get a Beta of on line ordering going.

You’ll now see a link to order wines we have in stock on the Wines page and the Orders page.  Right now just wines from previous releases that have not sold out are listed.  In the next few weeks I hope to get the wines for the Spring Release set up and allow people to order those on line.  It will take a bit to figure out the allocation system.

On the order page you see a discount of 20% for Wine Club members.  We don’t have a wine club set up yet on line but will also be adding that soon.  Until now we’ve limited our Wine Club to sign ups local to the San Jose area who sign up live at events.  We’ll be expanding that this year.  We will also be moving Futures ordering on to the on line system.

Our plan is to still send out letters to those who want them and we’ll start in the Spring with letters asking people to log in and order.  There will be an option to receive future offers by email or an option to continue to receive the postal letter.

 

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Rainy Day Blues

The pride and joy of my kitchen has suffered a major set back.  The tractor died on Saturday.  *Sigh*  On the agenda for Saturday night was ground rib eye burgers with cheese and mushrooms…that was until the tractor quit on me.  It wasn’t the screeching grinding halt of a noise that I’ve read about on other blogs.  Nope, I could tell right away from the sound and behavior that I lost part of the gear, it was stripped.  There are theories that the plastic housing is to blame, that it’s not durable enough for the speed of the motor and that it flexes, causing the gears to grind.  I’m going to disagree, at least in my case, because it would appear to be improper alignment..  After pulling the head off and observing the guts, I still can’t figure out where the rough grinding sound is coming from.  See, there was a ton of gooey grease in there.  I think there must be ball bearings underneath the assembly unit where the dough hook attaches.  I didn’t want to do a full tear down, I’ll leave that up to the shop.  In the meantime I’ve been looking around online for a professional grade (restaurant grade?) meat grinder.  Bread making is also on hold, but I can manage doing that manually if I get desperate.

Yesterday we hosted a small Open House for Pick Up Day.  Always fun to hang out and visit with the regular locals and even better is when someone new shows up!  We got to meet a couple new faces this time and overall I think everyone had a good time.  The afternoon was crisp so I had Paul light a small fire and that seemed to brighten up the gloomy winter day.

We had been shopping the day before for vinyl and Paul played several of his jazz and blues records.  We stayed away from Christmas music, seems like everyone is already burned out on holiday tunes.

Through the front window I snapped some pics of the soggy vineyard:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White sage and red blooms on the pineapple sage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rotated the head to capture the non-worn part of the gear:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is the worn section…tragic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Goatsview Syrah”

Coastview Syrah 2012

Paul and I dropped off the bins and trailer the night before the harvest…on the drive in we saw a ton of deer, a bunch ‘o wild turkeys, happy cows on a ranch eating green apples, and goats.  Lots and lots of them all under the keen supervision of (very cute) herding dogs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next morning the goats came up into the staging area to visit with us.  I shooed one away from the trailer wiring and another was showing interest in the bumper and tire of the car.  We were on the ready to shoo them off the tall trailer where our two bins of grapes were…

This guy was doing laps around me, I think he was trying to distract us so that the other goats could get into mischief, “hey look at me! over here! yoohoo!’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loaded up and ready to go mobile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The staging area is in the canyon just below the vineyard, we watched the sun on the hillsides above us but we were long gone by the time this spot saw sunshine.

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Fall Release Offer Letters

Last week I was able to print, sign, fold, and stuff the offer letters and get them in the mail…no small task while we ramp up harvest and crush activities.  Paul got home from the day job and I sat him down with a pen to sign letters while I folded and matched up the envelopes to the order forms.

As I was preparing the letters and reading the content, it occurred to me that I have a really hard time keeping up with the winemaking notes.  I’m grateful for Paul’s notes and think I’ll start my own wine journal this harvest.

The thing that I struggle with is that the letters are about wines we harvested two years ago, but only two weeks prior to printing the letters we racked all of the 2011’s, so those notes are fresh in my mind.  Then, just in time to really mess me up, we’re harvesting and bringing in new fruit for 2012 and I’m focused on that.

Without good notes, it’s hard to remember year over year all the details of each wine.   We’re close to or past 30 bottlings now and I’m certain I will refer to this website for the notes, thank you Paul for posting them!

By Friday of this week the letters should have reached your mailbox.  If you are on the mailing list and looking forward to ordering wine this Fall but have not received a letter by this weekend, please send me an e-mail and I’ll take care of it.

Cheers!

[email protected]

Next Up…pics from harvest and crush 2012

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Hiking

We’ve been getting some good hikes in the last few weeks.  It’s great training for harvest, probably the best thing we can do in fact.  Calero County Park has been the destination for most of our hikes.

There are a total of about 40 miles of trails in the park and the connected open space preserve.  Mostly during the wee we’ll do smaller hikes of 3 to 5 miles.  There has been a lot of wildlife we’ve seen on the trail this year.  We’ve seen deer, including a fawn less than a week old, bobcats, turkey, rattlesnakes,wood rats, coyote, rabbits, skunks, skates, and all kinds of lizards and moles.

Birds are a regular site too, with red tail hawks and turkey vultures like the one below the most common.  We’ve seen egrets and lots of different small birds.  No pigs though this year.  We see signs of them but have not seen them live yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend we did a very long hike. 9.5 miles in just over 4 hours. We went through all parts of the park including a climb to Bald Peak, the highestpoint in the park. We’ll be back a few more times before harvest for sure.

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Crushpad Sold and Broken Up.

Most of you know that our first commercial crush was done at Crushpad in 2005.  What we usually tell people about it is that we were grateful to have a place to make wine.  It was very hard to find anyone south of Napa or north of Paso Robles that would allow a new winery to use their facility.  We also say;  “We learned a lot at Crushpad, mostly that we didn’t want to make wine at Crushpad again.”

We actually started looking for a new facility during that 2005 harvest.  There was nothing I’d say was super wrong or unfixable that year, it was just the second vintage at Crushpad, and there were some kinks for sure.  The main thing was it wasn’t really set up to handle what I’d call serious commercial clients.  It was crowded and chaotic and a few time we had to wait on larger groups to make decisions before we could get on equipment to use it.

I discussed our situation with the founder of Crushpad Michel Brill and wanted to know if there were any changes planned to address the needs of commercial clients.  At that point there were not.  Michael wanted to keep the focus on being a community winery and his plan was simple, when someone was big enough to need another facility or more dedicated use of equipment, it was time for them to move on and he’d be happy for their success.

I told him that I though that created a huge revenue problem for his company.  If he was always loosing his largest clients, he’d have to devote a lot of marketing resources and money to bringing in large numbers of smaller ones to make up the gap. That too was a factor in not staying.  I didn’t see the revenue model being sustainable and that would present risk for us if we stayed.

I stayed on good terms with Michael and the staff at Crushpad though and continued to refer both growers and people interested in making wine to Crushpad.  I knew just because it wouldn’t work for us, didn’t mean it would not for others.  Over the years I’ve followed the changes there but not deeply.  I noticed that Michael did seem to shift the business to handle more of the commercial clients.  Eventually it seemed like the majority of the clients where commercial.  I actually didn’t notice though when Michael left Crushpad last year.

A few months ago Crushpad hit the wine news again.  It looked like the situation there was critical an the company was in serious financial trouble.  Yesterday this article closed things off for Crushpad.  The company is shuttered now and there appears to be an attempt to spin off something for the commercial clients.  I wish everyone the best and hope they can get their wine.   We are still grateful for the opportunity we had there and still happy we moved on, and it is sad to see Crushpad closing.

 

 

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Training Camp Opens

Training camp for the NFL opened last week and that signals the start of training camp for us as well.  Each year we pick up the exercise to get ready for the harvest season.

Last year turned out to be very tough on us.  Harvest seson went very long, more than 14 weeks from first pick to last barrel filled.  Most years we count on 8 or 9 weeks from first pick through last barrel and the second longest we’ve had was 11 weeks.  Both of us were really worn out by mid December last year.

This year we’ve actually been training earlier.  Stefania has been treadmilling and running since April.  I’ve been walking 30-40 minutes every day and adding in jogging as well.  We’ve been getting in a hike every week.

We’ve picked up the pace now and have been doing a hike every 3-4 days.   We’re increasing the distance too and amount of climbing.  The running, walking and treadmilling will continue also and I want to add some biking.  Harvest this year looks like it will be early so I’m guesing we only have 5-6 more weeks to get ready.

 

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Boots

After we wrapped up bottling I decided I needed some new boots for the winery.  My current ones are really good but they are heavy and after standing for ten hours my legs and feet felt really heavy and tired.  I was thinking something lighter would be good for the longer days n the winery.  I could wear the heavy ones when I needed heavy water proofing and the extra toe protection and change out into tlighter ones when I didn’t.

This is no easy task.  I wear size 14.  It really limits what is available.  There are also some brands that just don’t fit well.  Nike runs small, I need a 15 so I don’t even bother looking at Nike.  In this round of buying I found out Merrell doesn’t work either the arch is placed weird.  Usually I just go on line and buy shoes.  That’s what the picture above was for.  I took pictures of everything I liked and then figured I’d check Amazon for size 14’s.  The funny side result is that shoes are the only thing I’ve bought from Amazon in the last 10 years so I get shoe sale emails from Amazon daily.  They think I have a fetish, the limits of data mining.

We had some time though last Saturday so I thought we’d run around and see if we got lucky.  Sports Authority was the first stop.  They had two pair of size 14’s.  One was the Merrel and it didn’t fit right.  The other was more of a fashion shoe and not a real hiker it had poor tread and no ankle support.

Next we went to Mel Cotton’s where I got my current heavy duty boots.  No luck, nothing in a 14.  REI was stop number three.  The sales guy was full of confidence.  “Of course we have lots of size 14’s, no problem”, he said.

“Great” I said, “Bring them out.”

“All of them?” He asked.

“Yes, all of them” I replied.

Ten minutes later he came out of the back with one pair of boots.  The same pair I had rejected as fashion boots at Sports Authority.

On to stop number four, Big 5.  There we had some more sales guy fun:  “What are you looking for?” he asked in his best sales guy voice.

“Hiker’s” I said.  “Light weight, waterproof would be nice but is not mandatory”.

“Well which style do you like.  What are you’re favorite brands?” He queries.

“No.  That’s not the way this works.” I say, “The way this works is you go in the back and find all the size 14’s you have and bring them out here.”.

He looked a little puzzled and hurt, not being able to use his best sales technic, but he complied and disappeared to the back for 10-15 minutes.  Stefania thought he might be hiding from me.  Eventually he came out with three pairs.  Score, huge score!  I tried on all three and bought two.  A pair of Hi Tech and a brand called Itica.  Kind of my general rule is if I find shoes that fit and I like I buy them, because you don’t know when that will happen again.

 

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The Day Job

The number one question we used to get was; “Who takes care of your vineyards”.  We still do get that question from time to time from people just meeting us.  Now though the number one question is, “Are you doing this full time?”

The answer is yes and no.  Since we get that questions so much I thought it was time for a crew review.

Millie has been with us the longest, since 2004.  She works for us about 2 days per week on average.  She does vineyard work and any construction tasks we have.  When we do vineyard installations she’s the lead person on those.

Herrardo has been with us since 2007.  We usually refer to him as Jerry since people have a hard time pronouncing Herrardo.  He’s working about one day per week on average.  He does our heavy labor including construction work, netting and major repairs.  He also puts together our crews for us when we need larger groups.  Mostly the crews are his family.

Ron has been with us since 2010.  He works a few days a month on local sales for us.  Getting our wine into local restaurants in Santa Cruz and San Jose.

Jaye is our newest person.  She’s in the picture above working in the winery.  She joined us last September.  She’s done everything for us, vineyard work, winery work, shipping and she’s starting to do a little bit of sales work.  Our plan is when we open a tasting room she’ll run that.  She’s working about 30 hours a week for us.

Stefania is full time and gets a paycheck now, which she cashes about once every 7 weeks 🙂  She’s really become the General Manager.  She runs everything day to day and handles all the winery and vineyard management including the finance side of the business and dealing with vendors.

So my usual response to the questions is; “I still have a day job, someone has to have health insurance.”  I run a group of about 50 support engineers, managers and account managers in the software part at a very big high tech company.  I’ve been there 8 years and have enough vacation time that I can take off the 15-20 days a year when my presence in the winery is really critical.  These days most of my tasks are planning vineyard maintenance and doing the winemaking.