Author: Paul

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Tahoe Hiking

Last week Stefania and I were able to get away for four days to Lake Tahoe.  We went on a couple of long bike rides on Sunday and Monday in search of vintage record albums.  Tuesday we headed to Emerald Bay and Eagle lake to hike the trail into the Desolation Wilderness.

It was a really tough hike, about 5 hours total that we spent.  The altitude went from 6200 feet to about 8800 feet and most of the trail was steps.  We got lost a couple times on the trail.  Once around Eagle lake was fine,we spent 45 minutes rock climbing over boulders which we both enjoy.  It did put us about an hour behind schedule.

That hour delay wore us out  and we didn’t reach our original goal of Velma Lake.  We did get to the top of the ‘first saddle’ though which is the highest part of the hike.  We were due to check in at 4 PM an I knew we had to turn around to make that time.  The picture above is of the second saddle.  We thought it would be too long a climb down and up to make that.

We did get a great view of the upper falls from the Velma Lakes into Eagle lake that you can see above.  We rested on the top and took pictures for about 30 minutes.  The trail was crowded lower down by Eagle Lake but by the 1/3 way up we ran into very few people.

This last picture was looking out from the saddle back towards Lake Tahoe.  Stef thought the hike was too hard but I’d like to try it again.  Without losing that hour I think we would have been in better shape at the top.  I also thought it was pretty rewarding once we reached the high elevations.

If we do go again we’d need to count on 8 hours I think and not 6 to check in.  Having a better idea of the trail route would help with a second attempt too.  We spent a fair amount of time trying to find or stay on the trail.

We were both pretty tired after but had a great bottle of wine and a skirt steak with quinoa back at the hotel.

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Food Porn

Salami, Mimolette, Truffle triple cream from Cowgirl Creamery and local honey…yumm!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crazy Hot Eggplant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Broiled Salmon & Eggplant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spicy Chinese Tofu

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Haut Tubee Vineyard Work

Last night, after an 88 minute hike at Calero, we settled ourselves out back on the deck and relaxed.  Paul had a martini and a cigar, I had a headache and some water.  Too much sun for me yesterday so I guzzled a ton of water instead.

With dinner, I opened a bottle of grenache that Paul suggested I grab off my side of the cellar.  We both really enjoyed the nose, body, and mouthfeel of this wine.  I kept saying over and over, this reminds me of dusty berries freshly picked off the vine on a beach trail.  And I asked Paul if he knew what I meant, had he ever had a dusty berry off a beach trail vine.  Oh yeah, yeah, I’ve done that, and I too smell and taste the dusty berry.

Paul grilled really spicy chicken breast, halved zucchinis and corn tortillas, an amazingly weird yet satisfying combo, and we lingered over the grenache.

This morning, I jumped on the treadmill and figured I’d pound out my usual 2 miles and then get on with the day.  After a mile, I quit, got my bike down from the ceiling hook and pumped up the tires.  Off to the Church Vineyard and market, things to do, people to see, etc etc.

I get to the church, and it’s a jungle!  It was mostly done flowering, but the third and fourth shoots that I was there to thin out were just newly blooming.  I sent Paul a quick text and said, “I’m gonna be here awhile”.

It took me just under two full hours to thin, tuck, and sucker these 20 cabernet vines, but it was time well spent.

The pile of cuttings, many of which had fresh blooming clusters on it, smelled exactly like the dusty berries on a beach trail vine from last night.  Kid you not.  I stood over the pile for an extra minute just absorbing the aroma and tying it back to so many other great wines I’ve enjoyed.  I kept smiling and grinning like a total dork as I made the assimilation.

I got back on my bike, pedaled over to Chavez market and picked up some munchies and mixers for tonight’s Happy Hour at Romero Bar and Grill.

That is not the church in the background…that’s the firehouse.  Which, kudos to the firemen that work there, because when they see me working out in the vineyard, they often wait til they are past me before blaring the sirens.  For all I know it’s out of respect for the church, but either way, I’m glad they wait.

 

 

 

 

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Sexy Fishnets – NOT

After this year we will have outgrown the space at Chaine d’Or.  We’ve got a few plans we’ve been kicking around and the one we finally choose will largely depend on how sales go over the next 12 months.  We could go back to doing part of our production at another facility.  There are a few options and a few people we like working with.

We’ve could also open our own facility.  We’ve talked about doing this some where in San Jose in either an urban or suburban facility.  That would make our commute easier and let us lay things out the way we’d like to do them.  That’s expensive though since we’d need a lot of new equipment.  If we do that option we know we’ll need to open a tasting room as part of the facility to drive more local sales and offset some of the costs of running the facility.

We’ve talked about what we want from a tasting room and we’re planning this summer on touring in Napa and Sonoma to get ideas on what to do and not to do.  I’m really leaning towards a modern or post modern look.  Glass and chrome.  I like the idea of doing a walk around facility too rather than a bar.  Something more like the Apple Store, with pouring and information stations that you could approach and linger at.  Maybe one for each vineyard with a slide show of the vineyard you could view.  Instead of the pouring staff standing behind a bar looking at you, they’d move around with people in the facility, letting them go to the station they wanted to explore and answer questions in an informal environment.

I’d also like to tie in a lounge area.  When you’ve had your fill of information and tasting, a place to sit comfortably and review the wines.  Maybe that’s a ‘Wine Club Lounge’ that you could plan a longer visit at with light snacks and music.  I’d like really nice professional photos of the vineyards to decorate the walls.  We’ve talked about what else we might sell in the area and we’re pretty sure we’d limit it to just a few things and have those be very high quality and unique. Something you wouldn’t see in another tasting room.  We also want to have space for visiting artists that we enjoy.

We won’t have $5.99 fake fish netting.  I promise, no matter what.  I actually was offered that in email today.  Something to add to our tasting room.  Fake fish netting?  Does this make the wine better?

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Outdoor Living and Working

My day job today was supposed to be bookkeeping and getting caught up in the office.  Instead, I’ve set myself up outdoors on the deck under the canopy and have been working on blogs instead.

I lost about a weeks worth of office time with the poison oak rash that consumed and infected my entire right arm.  Some people complain of having double chins, I had a double elbow from the swelling…good times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I grabbed a quick shot of Paul and Jaye as they headed back down the rows at Chaine d’Or to spray for powdery mildew.  We added some African Bird Pepper into the mix to thwart any more deer should they get back in the vineyard.

Jaye had to leave early for a school event so I took over and joined Paul.  Up and down each row we went, in close proximity to one another, Paul sprayed the right hand side, I sprayed the left.  The only sounds were the intermittent squeaks of the pump handles and the spray hitting the leaves.

There was a certain zen to the rhythm of walking, pumping, spraying.

Some people enjoy an afternoon of golf, walking the course, hitting the balls, drinking beer.  I’m not very good at golf, but I can relate.  I really enjoy spraying the vines, walking the rows, pumping and spraying, and especially drinking the beer.  I figure the backpack sprayer weighs about as much as a bag of clubs, but easier to carry in my opinion.

One of the things I like so much about walking the vineyard and spraying is the pace.  It’s slow enough that I get to see each vine and get a feel for the vineyard.  It’s also fast enough that I don’t stop and linger over tasks I know can wait, like tucking a shoot here, or suckering there, it’s more of a “hi, how are you, gotta run, but I’ll be back soon” kind of tempo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul is offering to buy deer tags for any of our hunting friends.

It’s a karma thing.

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Wine & Oysters

I promised Paul I would reconcile the bank account today, but since I’m feeling about a zillion times better than I have in days, I decided to get some photos uploaded.

If you haven’t been to the Tomales Bay Oyster Company, I highly recommend it.  We went up on a drizzly Thursday afternoon earlier this month and had the place to ourselves!

Based on reviews and after talking to the guy running the place, it sounds like you can expect to see large crowds of people on weekends – go early, go hungry, have fun.

 

Low tide…

 

 

 

 

Drank a lot of wine…

ate a lot of oysters, clams, mussels…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Millie & Jazzi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ila’s smile says it all…

 

 

 

 

 

Ingrid & Amber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BBQ’d oyster with Noelle’s sauce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We opened a lot of wine…

I shucked a bag of 50 small oysters and a handful of the larger ones…

Noelle grilled the rest of the large oysters…

Paul steamed a batch of clams and mussels…

The sourdough baguette, salami and cheeses were mostly un-touched.  (mostly)

Being able to share the day off with friends made it memorable.

Cheers!

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Urgent Care

I think I’ll start this post as a rant.  I’ve been to Urgent Care twice now in the past 6-7 years.  Once for stitches to close a puncture wound in my hand – oyster incident.  The other time was last week.  I didn’t go there, my doctor sent me there.  I had made a regular appointment and she did not have enough of the drug in her office I needed to inject me with.  In fact they tried every office in the building and no one had enough, so she sent me to Urgent Care.

I’m just gonna say if you are in urgent care you should have one of the following on your person – bandage, barf bucket, visible rash, something swollen so much you look like the kid from Mask.  A runny nose or a cough is not Urgent.  I had two of the four by the way.  Otherwise make an appointment for goodness sake.  Don’t make the guy with his eyes swollen shut wait behind you and your runny nose.

So now the back story.  Last Sunday we got an urgent email from Jerry at Chaine d Or.  Deer were in the vineyard and had eaten about 50 plants.  We went up Sunday night to find the problem in the fence.  Jerry had already gotten the parts to repair the fence, but we were coming from the movies and were not really dressed right for fence repair.

The fence was down over about a 30 foot stretch.  A combination of a wood rat den and a down limb had brought it down.  The wood rat was the danger.  They build their dens with poison oak.  I had to cut out a bunch with snipers and a chain saw to make enough room to repair the fence.

It’s an urgent operation.  You have to stop the deer right away or they will come back every night until the vineyard is stripped of leafs.  Stefania got to work putting up dryer sheets around the fence and vineyard.  Deer hate the smell and will avoid the sheets.

I got the area cleared and with help from Millie and Stef got 5 new posts pounded in and 30 feet of new fence up in about 2 hours.

It didn’t set in until Tuesday about noon.  First on my left arm, then most troubling on my neck.  By Thursday morning both arms were covered from elbow to wrist.  I had it on my right leg, waist and back.  It also was in my left ear, forehead, neck and around both eyes.  My right eye was swollen shut.  Stef had it on her right arm, waist and back.  Mine was worse though, probably from the chainsaw throwing poison around.  I had about 5 times more coverage on my body and eyes and ear were the biggest risk.

The doctor put me on a steroid to ease the swelling and that first shot helped right away.  We’re both still red and itchy but recovering.  Hot water helps the most so Stef’s been in the hot tub a fair amount and I shower or wash down every 6 hours or so.  If you wonder why we say we hate deer so much, here’s another reason.  50 lost plants and 3+ weeks of recovery.

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New Kindle Book on SCM

One of my favorite books on the Santa Cruz Mountains is ‘Mountain Vines, Mountain Wines. Two years ago the authors contacted us about a planned revision of the book.

The hard copy of that effort should be available later this year. In the mean time they have released a Kindle ready version for touring the area called:

Tour Guide to the Wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains

The download is $4.99 and available on Amazon. I think I was the second person to buy it. It’s a great resource from what I have read so far.

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Thinning at Crimson Clover

Friday I took the day off from the day job. We had traveled up to Sonoma the day before and I thought there might be more touring around on Friday but there wasn’t. We thought about going hiking but decided to help Jaye out at Crimson Clover instead. We had sent her out to thin the vineyard and it was going much slower than we counted on.

Stefania and I arrived about 9 am. We started by raising the wires on the first nine rows. We stopped on the 10th though and started helping Jaye thin. The growthwas much shorter starting in row 7 or so and we figured out that the crew had made a pruning error this winter.

Many of the spurs were removed and this was what was slowing Jaye down. Instead of removing one or two extra shoots from each spur she was having to pick one shoot out of dozens to reestablish the spur.

It is a set back for the vineyard. We’ll lose somewhere between 1000-2000 pounds of potential fruit this year. That would mean a ‘good’ yield will be about 3000 pounds. We counted on about 5000 this year. It’s bad but not tragic, the vineyard will recover.

I took the picture below of Jaye and Stefania working while I took a water break. We were able to finish thinning by 3 PM or so. We’ll go back in a couple of week and raise the rest of the wires as the shoots get longer. We’ll be busy thinning in all the vineyards over the next few weeks. It’s something we like to finish before flowering starts. We don’t want to do any work on the vines while they flower to avoid shatter.

It is also much harder to thin after flowering because the base of the shoot becomes hard. After flowering you need to use clippers to remove extra shoots. Right now we can just snap the shoots off with out hands.

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Magnums and a Bonus.

MONDAY 5/7 update.  All the magnums are sold.  There are 6 bottles of Chaine d’ Or left

I was finally able to get into the cellar for a count on the extra magnums today after returning from working in the Crimson Clover Vineyard.  Here’s what we have:

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains (Three total)

2008 Cabernet Sauvignon Crimson Clover Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley (Two total)

The deal is it is first come fist serve.  Email us at [email protected]

Regular price was $100 on each

SALE PRICE:

$75 each shipping included.  We will bill your CC on file, or you may contact us with a CC number.

Here’s the bonus.  We also have two cases and 10 bottles of 2007 Chaine d’Or Cabernet Sauvignon available.  This wine has the Chaine d’Or gold label and not the Stefania label but it is the same wine.  This lot was originally sold to a restaurant in Santa Cruz and they had it in their wine locker for some time.  We had trouble getting payment from them and eventually just took the wine back.  We’re not 100% sure on the storage, we’re trusting that the restaurant was honest in saying they had it in a commercial wine locker.  We’ll sell the cases at $180 per case with free shipping and the 10 bottle lot at $150 with free shipping also.