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Early Pregnancy

I planted the estate mourvedre vineyard in March of 2009.  By definition, this is a baby vineyard still.

The goal in 2009 was to grow one strong shoot to the cordon wire, this would become the main trunk of the vine.

The goal in 2010 was two shoots that would be the “forever” cordons.

The goal in 2011 was 4-6 vertical shoots on each cordon.  (4-6 vertical shoots = 8-12 spurs per vine)

This year the goal was 2 shoots per spur and our first “real” harvest.  Real is in quotes because we did harvest grapes in 2010 and 2011, but they went into the Haut Tubee blend and had little else to offer besides volume as the vineyard is not mature enough yet to try and crop on its own.

I’ve been intentionally stressing out this vineyard and making it struggle to grow – for one thing, the mourvedre vines we have worked with in Santa Clara Valley have all been extremely vigorous. The other reason is that I planted them in my front yard where most people have lawns and I didn’t want to waste any more water.  That said, only half of the vineyard is in Year Four of development and that’s ok, I’m not after instant gratification.

I think it’s a real travesty when vineyard owners try to get the maximum fruit yield possible when the vines are still young.  Aggressive watering practices and lazy pruning so that immediate results are available is detrimental to the long term health and care of the vines.  It also makes my job that much harder because my loyalty is to the vine and I want to do what’s in the vines best interest.

As an expression of my frustration, I made this analogy:

Just because a menstruating 10 year old girl can get pregnant, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Let your baby vines grow up, grow healthy, and mature before you try to crop them to full yields.  Treat each of your vines as individuals and recognize that some will struggle under the shade of the magnolia tree, some will outgrow and outpace the others and some will succumb to nutrient deficiencies in the soil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul and I treat each and every vine individually and each vineyard as its own entity – we would never employ the same methods on a young vineyard that we do in the older ones.  If we start to make sacrifices in the vineyard then we’ve stopped caring about our livelihood.  We strive to make wine we are proud to serve, share and enjoy with you.

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Social Media Part II

I promised a follow up blog from the other day about the following quote from an article I read in Sunday’s paper.

Quote #3:

If I hear one more story about, ‘We use the best grapes and best fields …’ Tell me something new. Because that’s what everyone else is telling me.”

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120711/BUSINESS/120719915/1350?p=2&tc=pg

Paul and I have a story that is the exact opposite of “the best grapes and best fields”.

It was the same year we planted the first vines around the property of our suburban home.  We had 25 grenache and 25 syrah vines but no grapes yet to practice winemaking with.  Paul was eager to try his hand at making wine but didn’t want to invest a lot of money going through the motions on a test run.

We lined up a rental crusher de-stemmer (later referred to as the crusher-pulverizer) and invested in a small basket press that we still use for the smaller lots that go into the Haut Tubee blend.  We still didn’t have a fruit source and we didn’t have a bottling plan, per se.

Someone clued us in to a possible fruit source so we did a scouting mission and checked it out.  We’re pretty sure the grapes are petit sirah and they weren’t for sale…so we absconded with a “few” pounds.

The gross part of the story is really the grapes. They are growing along two major streets as landscaping for a commercial property.  When we crushed them, the juice was a dirty brown and there was plenty of other debris floating along the top of the vessel.  Really gross stuff.

Our hands got filthy from handling the clusters and the fermented juice smelled like soy sauce.  Nasty stuff.  But Paul persevered and ran the grapes through the entire process…right up until I declared the odor too much to be contained in the house and it was dispatched down the drain.

But he did it.  Harvest, Crush, Fermentation, Press, done.

Best grapes? no way…

Actually, the grapes were exactly perfect for another project, we used them one year for the grape stomp party…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers!

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Veraison

Many years ago on this blog I said I’d try to not use French words in the blog or when talking about wine.  Veraison though is a word that only exists in French.  The English translation is: When the grapes turn from green to red.  So, everyone uses the word veraison through out the world because it’s easier than saying; “when the grapes turn from green to red”, every time.

It’s a big event for us in the vineyards.  It means the grapes are going to start adding color and flavor.  It also means it’s almost time for us to stop spraying.  The tasks change from maintenance to harvest preparations.  We’ll now start topping the vines, that means cutting the long tops off, to get ready for netting.  When netting goes on the vineyard work is really done.  We usually start that in August but we’ll be a little early this year it looks like.

We had our first veraison last Friday.  Millie sent me a picture of it starting in our Pinot Noir vineyard at Noon.  When I got home that night the Mourvedre in the home vineyard was also changing color.  The picture is from our front yard.  We still have a few weeks before all the vineyards change but we seem to be early this year.  Last year we had green grapes into September in some spots.

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Social Media

Maybe I just woke up crusty today, but an article in today’s paper got under my skin.  (Link to the article at the bottom if you want to read it in its entirety)

Quote #1:

Companies should be blogging, tweeting, posting videos and sending emails at a rate that some in the audience found surprisingly high. At a minimum, companies should tweet 100 times per month, Moffitt said. A good goal is for a company to tweet 200 times per month, and a great goal is 400 times per month. Blogs should be updated five times per month at a minimum, but a good goal is to do 12 blog postings per month, and a great blogger posts 30 times per month.

Quote #2:

“I believe that if you have a chief executive that says, ‘I have a guy that does that for me,’ the next thing that guy will be doing is running the company.”

Quote #3:

If I hear one more story about, ‘We use the best grapes and best fields …’ Tell me something new. Because that’s what everyone else is telling me.”

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120711/BUSINESS/120719915/1350?p=2&tc=pg

Where do I begin?

I know, the tweeting and blogging.  How am I supposed to be the CFO, CEO, Winemaker, Packaging Engineer, Vineyard Manager, Tasting Room Coordinator, Office Manager, Tank Washer, HR, and Gopher Baiting Monitor if I’m whiling away the hours writing 30 blogs and 400 tweets?  Are you Effing Kidding me? Who makes this crap up?

A winery we are personal friends with, belong to the wine club of, and purchase fruit from, had me fill out a survey about their online practices. I was blunt, I said they are sending out too many emails “check our blog, check our facebook account, follow up on twitter… bla bla bla”.  I understand the power of the delete button and believe me, I use it more often than not.  However, having to use it that frequently was turning their marketing into a nuisance and making me “hate” them.  At some point, in social media venues, you reach a saturation point with your audience and you piss them off.  Or I’m crusty.

Next blog up, a story that is the total and complete opposite of “we use the best grapes and best fields….”  Oh, you’ll be shocked for sure.  Spoiler Alert: we didn’t bottle the wine.

–just read this aloud to Paul and he acknowledges I woke up crusty today…think I’ll go have brunch with an Old Pal–

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Bread Free Update

I’m through week one of my gluten free diet.  So far the hardest part has been explaining to people that there’s no good reason I’m doing this other than taking a dare.  When I come off in two more weeks I probably will make a few changes to my ongoing diet.  I suspect I’ll cut back on sandwiches for lunch to twice a week instead of 4 times.

I used to eat at Subway a lot but I think I’m kicking that habit.  Bread just carries too many calories for the reward, at least bread that is average.  If Stefania is baking her fantastic bread that’s one thing, but Subway?  That bread is average at best.

I think basically it’s just doing the same thing with gluten’s I do now with beer and wine.  If it’s not a good product, I’ll skip it.  Health wise really nothing to report.  I’ve lost a couple of pounds last week, but I’ve been on a diet since January so not to unusual.  I haven’t noticed any real energy change but we’ll see.

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July Vineyard Checks

Saturday morning Stefania and I set out to check on all the vineyards.  We like to do this about every six weeks or so.  We’ll visit each one more often than that but it is a good idea to see what is going on everywhere at once to really get an accurate gage of how to schedule upcoming work.

This helps me come up with a vineyard plan for each vineyard for the next six weeks and the priorities not just for each vineyard but for all the vineyards as a whole.  We set off about 9 AM to start the inspection tour.

One thing you’ll notice as I go through the pictures is they all look the same!  This is actually great.  They should look the same.  Each vineyard is unique but we apply the same level of care to each one.  They should have a certain sameness to them.  It’s also good if they are all about on the same maturity schedule and we don’t have anything too far behind or ahead.

Crimson Clover was the first stop.  Below is a close up of the fruit clusters.  The clusters are loose and we expect a lighter than usual yield here because of some pruning decisions in the winter.  There’s a bit more fruit though than we thought we might get and it looks healthy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rows are in good shape with almost no weeds.  The vineyard needs a little water and a little nitrogen which we will put in the work plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up was the Peacock Vineyard, which I think we will change soon to calling the ‘Sheredy Yard’.  The peacocks have been captured and removed by the county and most of the crew never even saw them.  The Sheredy’s own the vineyard and it’s in their backyard.  I could call it the Sheredy Clos, but Clos is on the list of banned terms for American wines, even though it is exactly a Clos.

The fruit load here is high, we’re expecting about 50% more fruit from this site than we got last year.  Not too surprising as we were in a bit of a recovery mode last year after taking on the vineyard from another company.  Here the clusters are larger, fuller and tighter than at Crimson Clover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sheredy’s actually do most of the work themselves.  Anytime a major task needs to be done we stop by and spend 30-60 minutes giving them instructions and then they complete the work.  We’re doing the routine things and the crew comes in to check on things and correct mistakes, but you can see they followed our instructions on raising the wires very well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next was the long part of the drive up to Woodside and Chaine d’Or.  We decided to hit the other vineyards on the route on the way back from Chaine d’Or, that way we would end up at home.

Here’s a good example of why it’s good to visit everywhere in one day.  Jaye has been working on tucking the vineyard up for the last week.  She’s about half done and you can see that below.  Walking through though I decided I want to spray this Friday and we’ll need to finish tucking by then.  We made this the priority for the week and Millie will go help Jaye get it done by Tuesday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have the best looking Chardonnay fruit we’ve had in three years.  The clusters are larger than normal and everything looked mildew free.  This is our coolest site and has the highest risk of mildew.  I found a hornets nest in our walk through, but only a single gopher hole.  Jaye has been gopher killer supreme this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t take pictures at our last three stops, Harrison (Syrah), Brauns (Pinot) or Red Hen (Merlot).  All looked good with only a minor emergency at Red Hen.  The way the chicken pen had been laid around the vineyard this year made one spot hard to spray.  That spot had some mildew.  I quickly topped off all the excess growth to open up the canopy for spraying and returned the next morning to spray Stylet on the offending spot.  The owners also reconfigured the chicken pen so that I can get to that spot going forward.

In all we covered 129 miles and we have a full set of plans to get done before netting starts in mid-August.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bread Free

Yesterday a friend started this posting on the Wine Spectator forums about this article from the New York Times.  The article is about the growing level of food restrictions that guests are putting their hosts through in planning a dinner.  I commented on the Forums thread and my favorite quote from the article was this:

“Like a lot of chefs, I’m convinced that these diets are not always the results
of the compromised immune systems of American diners, but their growing
infantilism and narcissism,” he said.

The conversation took an interesting turn though when another friend issued a challenge to everyone to try being gluten free and seeing what happens.  I’m always up for a challenge.  I especially like to learn about these food related fads.  Stefania and I have to face the ‘sulfites or red wine gives me a headache’ one often.  There’s no more powerful counter than the facts, and what we’ve found over the years is 100% (that means no one) of the people who have made that claim to us, self diagnosed and did it incorrectly.

They have known nothing about the causes of headaches from wine or alcohol and have attributed the cause incorrectly.  That’s 100% of the time.  Even people we’ve met who have legitimate issues with alcohol digestion have miss diagnosed themselves.  One of my favorite sayings is that we have a ‘crisis of diagnosis’ in this country.

So I’m always up to learn more about these fads and self diagnosis.   The friend who issues the challenge I know is not speaking from an amateur or uninformed position.  I also know he’s in good health with a good diet, so the challenge interested me right away.

I can see how giving up gluten would be a huge benefit for most Americans because that really means giving up fast food, packaged snack food, and deep fried food.  I don’t generally eat those things now though so our friends claim that even he felt better was interesting.

I’m starting July 5th, the 4th if I can manage it and will run for 21 days until the 26th.  I’ll keep everyone up to date on how it goes.

 

 

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Website Updated

I’ve just updated the website with the new wines we will be releasing in the fall. Check the ‘Wines’ page for details. We will have three new releases. The last of our 2009 wines, the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon Chaine d’Or Vineyard will be released.

We’ll also have the first of our 2010 wines; the 2010 Haut Tubee and a new wine for us the 2010 Nueva Casa de los Padres. Details on the three wines and tasting notes are up. The Library Release will be the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains.

So far reception for the three new wines has been great and we’re very excited by this release. We’re planning on sending out letter in September.

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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