Month: September 2009

The weekend after Labor Day each year some close friends host camping in Big Sur. It’s a perfect time for us to get away. We are close to harvest, but being away keeps the panic down as everyone else starts picking and just makes us focus on something else.

I’ve got a new computer so guess what? These pictures are in reverse order of the weekends events, so I’ll tell the story backwards. 🙂

Nature really is great. Here’s new baby redwoods starting out from a tree burnt out in the fires last summer.

Stef and I hiked on Sunday morning up to about 2200 feet above the Big Sur Gorge. It was an impromptu hike, we hadn’t brought a lot of water with us. Just about two hours and 5 miles total.

Stef looking out at the ocean about 3/4 of the way up. We’d like to go back and finish the total 8 miles, but we just didn’t have enough water with us this day to finish.

Me at the fork between the trail to the waterfall and Manuel Peak. The waterfall trail is still closed from landslides.

On Saturday we played in the river for a few hours and Stef caught about two dozen crawdads for dinner. Then we headed up the gorge to see how far we could get with the very low water.

This is the end of the trail. We had to wade through the creek a couple times to get this far but at this point we would have to go waist deep so we stopped for the day.

We were on the hook for cooking for 12 that night. Here I am ready to cook with a glass of our 2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and my special shirt for the weekend.

Stefania boiled up the crawdads and I started in on the potatoes. Wrapped in foil and thrown in the hot coals for about 75 minutes. Turn them every 20 minutes so they cook evenly.

Then on go the Prime Rib Steaks. 13 in all over open flame. There’s no hair left on my hand 🙂

Sunday night was a bit of an adventure. We had about 1/2 inch of rain with us in our little two man 7 foot tent. We made it through though with just a little damp and mud and headed home the next day.

Tuesday night we actually moved all the lab equipment from the winery in Woodside to our home. It’s just easier to bring samples back here than drive up to Woodside each time we have a test to do right now. Woodside is also the most Northern site we have and our home is more in the middle.

Jerry was out gathering samples and Stefania ran tests yesterday morning. Here is her email to me:

Vista Verde:
Brix Hygrometer: 24
Brix Refractometer: 24
pH: 3.58
TA: .9
Visual appearance of seeds, many bright green
Juice a deeper red

Crimson Clover:
Brix Hygrometer: 25
Brix Refractometer: 24.95
pH: 3.67
TA: .7
Visual appearance of berries and seeds exceptional
Juice color visibly lighter color than above, though I probably didn’t get as good a skin extraction due to the thicker skins.

Bottom line…..

We’re going to turn the water on again at Crimson Clover to get through this weekends heat, then likely pick on Wednesday next week. Vista Verde still needs 10-15 days. Maybe right around October 1st. Stef has pictures she’ll get up soon.

Ok, not quite “GO” yet, we still have another week or so before harvest kicks into gear, but we are getting very very close. I was going to tell you about the chardonnay numbers, but Paul beat me to it (see yesterdays blog).

If I remember, I’ll take pics of the lab work today when I test the Crimson Clover cabernet samples.

Most other winegrowers are probably freaking out about the upcoming heat spike that is in the forecast but I think it’s a great opportunity to give the grapes one last push of sugar energy. Once that sugar level peaks, it’s all flavor ripening from there on out – I’ve tasted it, I’ve experienced it on my palate while walking the rows. It’s in the skins. I can’t really explain it beyond that.

Grape talk aside for a quick second, we saw Spamalot lastnight. Absolutely hilarious! A gas! Does anyone say that anymore? It was good to get out on a date and laugh at silly jokes, gestures, and totally absurd humor. I wasn’t sure I would “get it” having never watched or understood any of Monty Pythons movies, but you didn’t need to be familiar at all, though it helped with some of the parodies if you were.

I’m already talking about getting cheap seats for Saturday night and going with friends. Fourth row was nice, but there are no bad seats at the SJCPA so I’m headed back to the balcony this time.

Tuesday night we took samples of Chardonnay at the Chaine ‘d Or vineyard.

Upper Section:
Brix: 25
pH: 3.14
TA: .96

Lower Section:
Brix: 22
pH: 3.24
TA: 1.04

Combined:
Brix: 23
pH: 3.25
TA: 1.01

As we walked through the vineyard Stef though everything tasted “Juicy and fruity but still tart.” The numbers matched that assessment. We still need 7-10 days I think to get the pH a little higher and let the TA (Acidity) drop a bit more. The 1/4 inch of rain we had on Sunday night can be a risk, Chardonnay is prone to rot, but we saw no rot in the vineyard so the rain should actually help by keeping the BRIX in check while the acidity falls.

Ideal numbers for us would be 24-25 Brix, 3.4 pH and .8 TA so we’re pretty close to that. The flavors are almost where we want them, The acidity is masking the fruit some now, so I think that will be key over the next week.

Here are the details of our Fall Release. Stefania has spent the day stuffing letters and they went out in the mail today.

2008 Stefania Chardonnay Chaine d’Or Vineyard Santa Cruz Mountains

Price: $24 per bottle. Total Production 72 cases.

This is our first effort from the Chaine d Or vineyard since taking it over in the summer of 2007. In 2008 we severely pruned back the old vines in an effort to lower the spurs on each plant which had gotten very high in the past 20 years. This contributed to one of the lowest yields the vineyard has ever seen with just less than one ton per acre harvested on September 20th 2008.

The wine was immediately pressed and allowed to settle for 24 hours before being pumped into a chilled tank to start fermentation. Fermentation was on all native yeast and when the wine reached 16 BRIX it was inoculated with Malolactic starter and transferred to a combination of Sequin Moreau and Claude Gillet French oak barrels to complete fermentation. The lees were stirred every week and the wine completed both fermentations before Christmas. Stirring of the lees was then done every 3 weeks. The wine was bottled early, in May of 2009, as has been the tradition at Chaine d’Or to preserve its fresh fruit flavors.

The finished wine is bright and crystal clear with a light golden hue. The nose is rich with peach and stone fruit notes. There are hints of the citrus fruit notes of lemon and lime that are typical of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the wine is broad but refreshing. The oak notes are moderate and reflect the care we take in selecting our coopers. I suspect you will think we used a much lower percentage of new oak than we did as the effect is so well integrated.

Serve this wine just below cellar temperature at 48-50 degrees. We are releasing it in October so that it will be available when Dungeness Crab season starts in early November.

2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard Santa Clara Valley

Price: $38 per bottle. Total production 115 cases.

This is our third wine from this vineyard in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The grapes were harvested on October 29th 2007. Starting in 2007 Bill Holt of Uvas Creek began to only allow women to work in his vineyard. “They are gentler with the grapes”, was his reasoning. We 100% destemmed the clusters but did not crush the berries. Fermentation was on native yeast and we had to foot tread the must daily until the berries began to break up about 15 BRIX. The wine was raised in 60% new Sequin Moreau French Oak.

The wine is deep red with a pronounced nose of summer cherries and dark berry fruit. On the palate, there are powerful notes of ripe berries, spices and cherry fruit. The fruit is layered and complex with a classic Cabernet Sauvignon profile. This is a more serious and masculine Uvas Creek than the 05 and 06, but still retains the balance and red fruit profile of previous versions.

2007 Stefania Haut Tubee California

Price: $20 per bottle. Total production 94 cases.

Haut Tubee (pronounced Hot Tub) was inspired by the vines planted around our hot tub. The blend includes Chaine d’Or Cabernet Sauvignon, Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and Syrah, Grenache, Zinfandel and Mourvedre from the small vineyards we manage.

Each individual vineyard was processed on it own and the components blended in barrel. All lots were de-stemmed and allowed to ferment on native yeasts. Hand punch downs were done on all lots and fermentations lasted 14 to 22 days. The finished wine was transferred to tank before being assembled and aged in one new Hermitage barrel and 3 neutral oak barrels. The Haut Tubee program allows us to process grapes from the many micro vineyards we manage and produce a finished wine that expresses the dedication we show to these small vineyards.

The wine is deep red with a nose of spice, smoke, and ripe blackberry fruit. It is lush and soft with rich berry and summer fruit notes. The 2007 version of this wine is just over 50% Syrah and the wine shows the richness of the Syrah grape. The 25% new oak added notes of toast, smoke and rich spice. This wine should continue to develop in bottle for some time.

This week I finished the letter and allocation amounts and Stefania is working on getting all the shipping information together and the allocations to fit right on the order form. That means we are almost ready for the Fall Release!

This will be our third Fall Release and our 7th release overall. We’ll be doing just two releases a year now, one in Spring and one in Fall. I’ll have some more information about the wines and details on making them as well as tasting notes over the next few days.

For right now I just wanted to let everyone know the schedule and wines we will be releasing. There will be three wines in this release, that’s a first for us also. We’ll have our first white wine, the 2008 Chardonnay Chaine ‘d Or Vineyard, 2007 Haut Tubee and 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard.

We are trying to get letters out on the 15th, that’s next week. Shipping will start in mid-October when we usually have good weather around the country. All the letter will go out at once this time and I’m going to be pretty generous with allocations and extra requests. I know a lot of people are cutting back and if someone does want more wine, I’m going to get it to them.

The only thing we’ll be really short on is Chardonnay. A great deal was already committed to accounts that Chaine d’Or has had for 15+ years, so most people will not get an allocation of the Chardonnay. Do ask for it though if you’d like some and I’ll do my best.

I’ll have more information in the next few days.

We made a pit stop for a donut and a coffee for Stefania before heading out to visit Crimson Clover this morning and check on sugar levels. It’s been a great morning. Some high fog rolled in about 7:30 this morning and the vineyard was cool. The sun was just starting to break through when we arrived.

The grapes have fully turned now and are getting ripe. This vineyard seems to always have loose clusters with very small berries. I’ll have to watch tannin extraction in fermentation to make sure the wine doesn’t get too tannic.

This is exactly the effect we are after and all the work we’ve done early in the year is to achieve this. The clusters are hanging down in dappled sunlight, with a balanced amount of grapes on each vine. Yields will be small, about 2-3 tons per acre but complexity and depth of the fruit is what we are after. The clusters look really great this year.

A close up of the sun hitting the clusters. It’s not full on direct sun, the leafs create ‘dapple’ on different parts of the cluster through the day as the sun moves. We’re checking on three things now in the vineyard. First we pull of berries to do a sugar test. This gives us a BRIX reading. We want to make sure there is enough sugar to convert to alcohol and provide body. 22.5 BRIX creates about 12.5% alcohol. We usually try and harvest between 23 and 25 BRIX.

We are also checking on ‘secondary’ signs of ripeness. The seeds should be brown and the skins of the grapes should break apart easily in your mouth. The skins especially gives a clue for the ripeness of the tannins. That will make the wine smooth and enjoyable.

Finally we check on flavor. Cabernet Sauvignon goes through a phase I call ‘the meany greenies’. It taste green like bell pepper and green beans. Only sunshine will cure this, dappled sunshine, so as not to bake the flavors out or even worse burn them in. Next will come red fruit flavors, then berries and finally jammy flavors. We try and pick between the red fruit and berry stage to get a little of each. Right now the green flavors are gone, but the berry has not started to show up. We’re still 2-3 weeks away from picking at least.

The other task: bird rescue. It may seem like we hate the little birds from all the things we do to keep them out of the vineyard and away from the grapes, but Stef and I both really love birds. We have feeders around the house and call the birds that nest around us our pets. We just love the grapes too and need to bring them in at harvest.

This little guy had gotten his head stuck. I had to cut him out of the netting. He was pretty upset, squawking at me the entire time, but he was safely removed.

In all we got four birds out of the nets this morning. Stef is holding a little finch with a red neck that she’s just rescued. The homeowners at Crimson Clover are walking the vineyard every night and clearing the nets of any of these little guys who have gotten stuck. The vineyard looked great. We’ll check on it again next Monday and we expect it will be ready to pick around the 25th or 26th.

My first “Rock and Roll” album – now if only I had a player….

Yes it’s true, I heard that Def Leppard would be in town for a concert and I bought tickets the day they were available. I’ve been looking forward to this since I was 12 years old.

Actually, I would have been a little bit older, closer to 14 or 15. All I know is that I tortured my mom when I put this on to play. I like(d) to listen to music loud, really, really loud. The more she told me to turn it down, the more I turned up the volume. Of course I’m partially deaf now, but hey, what rebellious teenager gives a flip about that? Forty? I’ll be dead by then! Hah. Sigh.

And as long as I’m trippin‘ down memory lane, pictures of my very first record album below. Movie soundtrack to One on One – because it had a picture of Robbi Benson on the back cover and I thought he was soooooo cute. The music is pretty ok too, if you like Seals & Crofts (probably a good thing I don’t have a record player now that I think about it).

Anyway, looking forward to blowing my ears out some more tonight, Cheap Trick and Poison are playing too, that should be fun (?!). Last time I saw Poison they were playing with Jet Boy and Motley Crue at the Oakland Arena ~20 years ago. Our friend and rock and roll journalist Katherine tells me that Jet Boy is still actively playing, somewhere…I bet if I kept digging around I could find the ticket stub.

We’re back home now and back in the regular routine. We had a fantastic time in Chicago and I think we’ll be back in the winter/spring for a preview of our Spring Release.

Saturday we slept in to rest up for the party Saturday night. Since we’d be skipping dinner we decided to load up on a big lunch. We started with a walk to Daly plaza to see some of the sculptures there. There’s a large Picasso in the center of the square that Stef wanted a picture of.

Then we walked down to the Gold Coast and landed at Carmine’s on Rush and State. This was Stefania’s Lasagna:

I had a classic New York Steak with Roasted Peppers. One of the best steaks I’ve had. A prime cut, cooked perfectly.

We had a fantastic time. Hooking up again with old friends and meeting new people. We’ve been to Chicago so often now that there were neighbors of our hosts who recognized us and we caught up with them also. Stef and I managed to try all the Zinfandels and Syrah’s at the event. The 2003 Copain Broken Leg Syrah was my favorite. In all I think we each tried about 60 wines.

The bus ride back to the hotel from the event was a chance for one last picture. Here our friend ‘Tbird’ shows off his purple tongue while lounging on another new friend from Florida. That is a bottle of wine in his hands.

The next morning we had to make a 10am flight. Luckily we were able to upgrade to first class and do some recovering in the Admirals Club at the airport. This was the view of downtown from the club. The warm cookies helped too in the recovery process and we were back at home in time to have some friends over for dinner a just a bit more wine.