Stefania and I have both had a cold since we got back from Seattle but Saturday morning we still decided to get out and prune the little church vineyard.
Santa Teresa Catholic church is around the corner from us in San Jose along Calero Avenue. We’re not sure who put the vineyard in but it’s now about 5 years old. The church is on our regular route to the Post Office, gas station and local independent coffee shop. A few years ago we notice that the vines were in terrible shape so I stopped by one day and told Father Chris I’d volunteer to take care of them.
There are just 20 plants and it’s only 20-30 hours a year we have to put in, so it’s not much of a burden to help keep the neighborhood looking nice.
Here you can see that it is a suburban vineyard, right along the street and next to the fire station. The trunks on the plants are a little funky from the first couple of years of neglect before we took over.
We have been able though to get the cordons and spurs trained properly as you can see below.
The plants are very low to the ground so it’s a little hard to work, but not impossible. We’ve had to replace a few of the plants that died as well and the little ones are doing good. The little spot actually produces about 250 pounds of grapes. We’ll continue to keep up on it all through the year.
In the trade magazines we get there have been lots of articles about direct marketing to your customers via the phone. It’s the latest greatest craze. All the articles say that bigger wineries should even have a full time person who calls customers to make special offers, tell them about new releases and offer wine at discounts. These articles say smaller wineries should call as well and dedicate time to the effort.
Many of the wine boards have had discussions about wineries that have called them. Usually the call is about some sort of discount or special offer. Normally the tone of these discussions is that the wineries must be desperate to make a sale. From what I’ve read though it’s just the start of a new trend of direct marketing.
We’re not going to participate in this trend. We promise.
We do ask for a phone number when people sign up. We do that because UPS and GSO ask for a phone number when we ship. In case someone has forgotten to include it on their order form we can fill the info in without bothering them.
We have also used that sign up number a couple of times to call people when we had a question about an order they’ve placed. Usually we will try email first, but once or twice we’ve had to call. The only other time I can recall us using a phone number is when we’ve been going out to dinner with someone, either them visiting San Jose, or us visiting them and we’ve needed to call to coordinate plans.
That’s it, that’s the only time we’ll use your phone number.
We also will never sell any information, emails, phone numbers, nothing to third parties. We have been contacted in the past with interest in buying our mailing list, and I’ve flat out refused to consider it. That also will never change.
We do love it though if you email us, or call, and especially when you come visit. Don’t stop that please!
Every other year Paul takes me on a trip for New Years and my birthday. This past weekend was our year away and we spent it in Seattle with 6 of our friends. What a blast!
The condo we rented on Lake Union had a gorgeous view of the Olympic mountains, overlooked the lake and had an unobstructed view of the Space Needle. At 11:59 New Years Eve they light up the Space Needle with an eight minute long fireworks display, it was fantastic!! We popped a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon to toast the new year and promptly fell asleep at 12:12 a.m.
On Sunday we attended the Seattle Seahawks vs. St. Louis Rams game. After watching the Rams stomp, squish and otherwise annihilate the 49rs just the week before I thought for sure they would win and take the championship title. What a surprise!
Not knowing that the Seahawks are hosting the Saints this coming Saturday, I wore my Saints T-Shirt underneath a newly acquired Seahawks sweatshirt to the airport on our way home. I mention this only because I told the TSA agent that no, I was not going to remove my sweatshirt, and claimed I was shirtless underneath…”you want me to pass security in my bra? I don’t think so”. I got the full female pat down, which, for the record, is faster than taking the shirt off and on and less hassle with hair, glasses, earrings getting caught, etc. I figure he must have been a Rams fan…
At the market after we got home I couldn’t help myself with a bag of fresh cranberries…with no plan on what to do with them I bought them anyway, and a fresh pineapple. After unpacking and settling in a bit, I got online and found a recipe for fresh made cranberry juice. It’s amazingly easy.
We’ve been pretty quiet the last few weeks. Stefania has wrapped up shipping and that kept her busy. Last Saturday we went to the winery to top up barrels. That’s been about it.
Thursday though we’ll start in with our vineyard work for 2011. Pruning will start and as usual we’ve waited until after the full moon. We could have started Tuesday but it’s been raining and it’s really not a task to do in the rain if we can avoid it. I’ll try to get some pictures up as we work through all the vineyards. Before and afters especially and maybe a video or two on pruning techniques.
Our next major tasks in the winery won’t come until after the 1st of the year when we’ll start racking the 2010’s as well as any 2009’s that need it.
Many of you who have come to visit us over the years have gotten to meet our friend Millie. If not at the winery, then at our home over a bottle of wine.
Millie has been helping us from the very start of Stefania Wine. There is literally not a single vine nor single bottle that she has not personally touched along the way. She’s put in vineyard posts for us, planted vines, pruned, sprayed, driven the tractor a hundred times. She’s bucketed wine at the press and done punch-downs on every lot. She’s put wine into barrel and been there for bottling day.
She’s hooked up electricity when we’ve needed it and built or fixed dozen of things we use in the vineyard and winery. Her usual job at bottling was to lift every single case of glass and start it on the bottling line. She’s been covered in dirt, and sweat and wine more than once. There’s no one we owe more to than Millie.
So many of you know Millie because she is so easy to talk too, quick to make a friend and generous in her spirit. There’s nothing she enjoyed more than hanging out in our backyard and talking wine with people from all over the country.
This month Millie decided to move to Colorado to help her sister with a new house she’d purchased. We had a going away party for her and gathered friends to say good bye. We all hope that she’ll decided to come back and that her stay is just temporary. Everyone will miss her a great deal.
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve gotten together with other friends and of course they’ve asked about Millie and we’ve told them about her move. Our friend from Tennessee asked Stefania and I how we’d cope with her being gone in the winery and vineyards. We didn’t have an answer for him. It was in fact the first time we’d even thought about it. For us we’ve just been completely focused on her friendship. Getting her off on her trip safely and encouraging her to come back and visit us. We’d only missed her as a friend and hadn’t thought about how it would impact the business.
We know that Stefania Wine will cope and we will figure out a way. For both Stefania and I though the personal relationship is so much more important. We wish Millie the best in Colorado. We do hope she will come back to us some day and we always will value her friendship, her great heart and all she’s done for us.
Final of three in the series on our Winter Futures/Spring Release
Our 2008 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon is again a blend of three unique vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The Elandrich Vineyard performed well during the season and yield was up slightly from 2007 at about 1600 pounds. The break down was 1000 pounds of Merlot, 500 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon, and 100 pounds of Zinfandel and just about 30 pounds of Syrah. The grapes were harvested on the morning of October 9th and crushed and destemmed at Chaine d’Or. Final Brix was 22.5 and pH was 3.47 Superfood was added to the bin and fermentation was on native yeasts. Fermentation took 12 days and the wine was gently pressed and transferred to a new Sequin Moreau barrel. An additional ½ barrel was added to the Haut Tubee blend.
The Chaine d ‘Or Estate Vineyard was under our first year of management and we took steps to limit yields and open the canopy for more ripeness and sunlight in the Cabernet section. Yields were further limited by natural conditions of the unusual season. The clusters and berries were very small and of intense flavor this season with complete ripeness coming in late October. Harvest took place on the morning of October 25th with a mostly volunteer crew and we finished in just over 2 hours, bringing in 1800 pounds of grapes or under one ton per acre. Brix at harvest was 26.5, a high for the site and pH was 3.42.
The grapes were 100% destemmed and crushed into a single t-bin. The natural, native yeasts of the estate were used and a Malolactic starter was added half way through fermentation. Punch downs were limited to one per day to minimize tannin extraction and in an effort to keep the wine from becoming too dark and intense. Fermentation was very gentle and extended for 23 days. The wine was gently pressed and transferred to tank to settle for 72 hours before being placed in one new sequin Moreau barrel and one used French oak barrel.
The blend included 250 pounds of estate Merlot that was harvested on October 9th. Those grapes were destemmed and crushed and began fermentation on native yeast in a 60 gallon tub. The must was combined with the Cabernet Sauvignon on 10/25. Small amounts of the estates Petite Verdot and Cabernet Franc were also added at harvest on October 25th.
The Harvest Moon Vineyard also saw yields down greatly in 2008 and we took just 2 tons from the vineyard vs. 8 tons we had hoped for. Harvest took place on October 26th and the grapes were transferred to Chaine d’Or for processing. Final numbers were Brix, 23.5 and pH 3.62. The grapes were destemmed and crushed into our 3 ½ ton stainless steel tank for fermentation on native yeast. Malolactic starter was added 10 day later. Fermentation was very slow and gentle and we used a combination of pump over’s and punch downs averaging one per day. We used a gentle routine in 2008 on all our Cabernet’s to minimize the huge tannins of the vintage.
The must completed fermentation on 11/17 after 22 days and was pressed into tank for 72 hours to settle. Due to the large solid to juice ratio, we had to climb into the tank and bucket out the large amount of must into the press. The wine was transferred to 3 new Sequin Moreau barrels and two neutral French oak barrels.
In the Spring of 2009 we combined the two barrels of Chaine d’Or with two barrels from Harvest Moon. That May the single barrel of Elandrich was added to the blend and an additional Harvest Moon barrel was chosen to provide topping wine. We racked the blended wine more often than usual in an effort to soften the tannins in the wine. The finished wine was bottled in August of 2010 after 22 months in barrel. The final blend is:
Tasting Note: The wine is dark hued tending to purple. The nose is classic Cabernet with plum, dark berry fruit and currants with a top note of spicy oak. In the mouth the wine shows more dark berry fruit, mocha, ripe currant and a touch of toast. The wine is very well structured and comes across as fresh even with the huge tannins. The structure, acidity and density reminds me a great deal of a Super Tuscan, being very well rounded. The finish is long with complex black fruits showing. Promises a very long life in bottle.
Second in a series of three on our next releases….
In March of 2007 we received a call from a family looking for help in pruning a one acre vineyard. Usually we don’t do single task jobs like that, preferring to manage our vineyards through all parts of maintenance so we have control over final quality. The homeowner though was desperate. The vineyard had been installed in 2005 and had not been pruned at all in 2006. I knew that if it was not properly pruned in 2007, the entire vineyard would have to be started over from scratch and wouldn’t yield until 2010.
We went out with a small group of friends and spent two back breaking days of some of the hardest vineyard labor we’ve ever done. The plants had been left in grow tubes since planting in 2005. The plants were actually very healthy, but the grow tubes had limited the space the young vines could grow in. The result was that each plant had 8-20 stalks tightly wrapped like 5 inch thick rattan furniture.
We had to use large tree pruners to cut through the stalks until there was just one left. They were so thick and hard that our friend Kenneth and I were the only ones strong enough to cut away the stalks. Even then we had to do just 8-10 plants before talking a rest and letting the other person continue. Stefania led every one else on our pruning team. After we’d cut away the stalks and selected a new cordon the other pruners would debud the remaining stalk except for two buds that would become the new cordons. It was step, step lunge and repeat, 900 times.
That time in the vineyard though gave us a glimpse that this might be a very special place. The vineyard is located in a small valley between the Santa Teresa Foothills and the main Santa Cruz Mountains range. This particular vineyard is at the foot of ‘El Toro’ which is a 1200 foot high volcanic cinder cone. The small area around El Toro is the only place in the world to find Poppy Jasper which is formed when volcanic and seismic rocks are active in the same area.
This little valley has the most complex mix of soils we’ve ever seen, with the volcanic wash from El Toro combining with the lift thrust soils of the San Andreas fault. The weather also was near perfect. Fog rolled up into the vineyard every night from the Pacific to cool the vineyard, but burned off early in the morning leaving a warm sunny site during the day.
We decided to manage the vineyard through that summer and oversee its restoration. We decided to drop all the fruit in 2007 to allow the vines to build strength and fill out from our pruning efforts. By that Fall we were so confident in the vineyard’s potential that we informed Ted and Bill at Uvas Creek that 2007 would be the last vintage we’d be buying fruit from them. In 2008 this would become the source for our Santa Clara Valley offering. We were very excited to see how the complex soil and excellent weather would influence the finished wine.
Our first harvest from these four year old vines was on Sunday September 28th. The vineyard was under our second year of management. We dropped @ 600 pounds of fruit in late August to balance out the plants and insure even ripening and then began a system of reverse deficit irrigation to slow down sugar levels to allow the flavors to mature.
Final numbers came in very ripe but with good acidity. Something we would see all year in 2008. Brix was 27.2 and pH came in at 3.53.
Harvest was with a mix of paid and volunteer crews and we picked just under 3200 pounds. The grapes were small, and intensely flavored. We transported them to Big Basin Vineyards for processing, then sorted and 100% destemmed the grapes, but did not crush the berries, opting for whole berry fermentation. The must was foot treaded several times until fermentation started. We again used native yeast fermentation. Fermentation took 18 days to complete and the wine was gently pressed and transferred to 2 new Sequin Moreau barrels and one old French oak barrel for 67% new wood treatment. Malolactic fermentation was begun in bin and completed in barrel.
As the wine matured at Big Basin the winemaker there began to ask us if he too could get fruit from this vineyard site. His quote was: “This is the best Cabernet I’ve tasted from the Santa Cruz Mountains.” We racked the wine on a regular schedule over 22 months and it was transferred to Chaine d’Or for bottling in the summer of 2010. We bottled the wine in August 2010.
PS: That first day we arrived on site the vineyard was bright red from the Crimson Clover the homeowners had planted as a cover crop between the rows. We started referring to the site as ‘Crimson Clover’ right away.
Tasting Note: Bright and expressive on the nose with red fruit and spicy oak notes. A very complex wine with tons of red fruit flavors; berry, ripe cherry, raspberry with a coating of chocolaty mocha and spice. Darker fruit flavors come out as the wine opens up with blackberry, boysenberry, currant, and plum notes. There are just loads of fruit flavors in this wine that continue in the long finish. The wine is dense and well structured but the fruit flavors remain lifted and lively. I encourage people to try this wine young with a 60 minute decant. It will age well for 10+ years but I suspect people will have a hard time keeping their hands off this wine.
First in a series of three on our next release………….
Compared to the 2008 season, 2009 was an easy year in the vineyard. We continued our efforts in the winter to lower the spurs on the old Chardonnay vines and the effort was 90% complete with almost all the fruit now back in the lower wire fruiting zone. With our third year of drought we decided to give the vineyard three doses of water in 2009. First we had to undertake an extensive check and repair of the drip system after two seasons of non use. The water was run for 4-6 hours on each occasion, in an attempt to simulate a summer storm. A final dose of rain on September 13th also assisted the vines.
Chardonnay harvest at Chaine d’Or was small for the estate, but we think this will be typical for us with our strict pruning and thinning routine. We picked on the morning of September 27th, using a crew of friends and our regular group of Jerry’s friends and family who are quickly gaining a reputation in the area as the best harvest crew available. The crew is paid by the hour, rather than by the bin and thus is meticulous in sorting and selection in the field. Picking bins arrive free of leafs or debris of any kind and substandard grapes are never picked.
It took just 5 hours to bring in 68 bins from the upper section and 81 from the lower section. A total of 149 bins or 4470 pounds was harvested. That is an average yield of 2.2 tons / acre. The fruit was healthy, and showed excellent golden maturity. The grapes were destemmed and pressed at once in our stainless steel bladder press. Final numbers were Brix 26, TA .93 and pH 3.62. The juice was transferred to a stainless steel tank where it was chilled to 54 degrees for 24 hours to encourage the gross lees to fall out.
On 10/5 the Chardonnay was transferred to 4 new barrels and 4 used barrels to continue fermentation. Superfood was again added and the juice was inoculated with Malolactic starter. On 10/12 the Chardonnay was reduced to 7 barrels with one old barrel removed. On 10/23 the Brix had reached -1% in each barrel and it was condensed down to a final 5 barrels (3 new, one 2008, one old) and a Keg and Carboy. Lees were stirred every two weeks to enrich the wine.
On April 4th we began the process to cold stabilize the wine by transferring it to tank and chilling the tank to 35 degrees. Sulfur was added to protect the wine and the wine was racked clean from its lees. On May 1st the wine was filtered and transferred to a second tank for bottling. Bottling was in early May and we decided to hold the wine into 2011 before release to allow it ample time to recover from the bottling process.
Tasting Note: The wine has a pronounced nose of pear, peach and ripe Fuji apple. There is a hint of spice and vanilla from the new oak. We delayed picking on 2009 to bring out more of these mature stone fruit flavors. In the mouth the wine is rich, deep and broad with mouth coating density. The fruit flavors are sweet and long. The wine finishes with sweet pear and apple fruit. The 60% new oak is well blended and lifted by the wines racy acidity. This is a big racy wine that remains fresh and lifted by it’s acidity.
123 Cases Produced.
Release: Spring of 2011
Release Price: $75 per 3 pack, $140 per six pack
A special note on our Chardonnay: This past summer Paul’s mother lost her partner and companion of over 20 years William ‘Bill’ Jansen to Pulmonary Fibrosis. Bill came out often to help us work in the vineyards and support our efforts. Bill’s favorite wine was our Chardonnay and we will donate $1 from every bottle sold in his name to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. http://www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org/
Stefania and I stopped at UPS this morning, and GSO is coming by the house tonight. We have now shipped all orders that came in before last Monday. There were a few odds and ends and a group of magnums that needed to go out. They are all in transit now.
We are completely out now of wine from our last release. The 08 Haut Tubee, 08 Syrah and 08 Pinot Noir are all gone. We do still have a small amount of the three 07’s left (Eaglepoint Syrah, Uvas Creek Cab and Santa Cruz Mountains Cab). Those will be available for reorders until the first of the year. By then I suspect we’ll be at a low enough level to pull them back into the Library.
This week I’ll start to put up vineyard and winemaking notes on the three wines in our next release. Our Futures offer will also go out this week on those three wines via email. The general release will be in mid February for everyone not on the Futures List and will feature the same three wines.
I put this one first just so that everyone knows we have been doing some work and not just playing around. We pressed the Split Rail Syrah this week and this is the press in action. Sofie is guarding the press for us.
This one is for Tim from the Wine Berserkers Forum. He had asked about getting a basket press to work more efficiently and I explained these inserts that Millie made for us a few years ago. The one on the left comes with the press and we made the ones on the right. They let you get better pressure on the press and turn the crank harder by being more stable in the basket than the small wood blocks the press comes with.
This picture was in response to a couple of threads on the Wine Spectator Forum. One asked about what type of car you drove. Another was about Fall shipping. I explained that the FJ Cruiser can hold about 20 cases of wine at a time. Here’s the car stuffed with boxes and ready to go to UPS.
I just thought this last one was funny. The ultimate low rent RV set up. It’s a pick up truck with a BBQ and a toilet tied down in the bed. Everything you need to tailgate at the big game.
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We have been able though to get the cordons and spurs trained properly as you can see below.
