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I’ve heard from a number of people who are wondering if we’re interested in setting something up in their city or when we’re thinking of expanding into their city.

Maybe a little back story is needed here. I’ve had a lot of people in the industry wonder why in the world we’re even trying to do retail and restaurants. Basically they’d love to be in the position we are of selling most of our wine direct and of selling out before its time for the next release. For many, many wineries, this is where they are trying to get to.

One reason we have focused on selling locally is that we’re local. That might sound funny, but it’s the best way I can think of to say it. We live here, and do charity events here and have friends and family here. We really would like to be able to send people to a wine shop or restaurant to try our wine. We want to be a part of the community here and show our commitment to being a local winery.

The second huge reason is maybe best summed up as the ‘eggs in one basket’ strategy. From the moment we wrote the first business plan our plan was to have a mix of both direct and wholesale business. I thought it was a risky plan to put all out effort in one sales channel. What if something happened to that channel? What if we couldn’t ship, or some prohibitive tax was put in place? I wanted to be able to have another channel available.

The funny thing is the channel that’s collapsed in the past year is the wholesale one, the one we’re trying to get into. Distributors are going out of business, brokers are cutting back, retailers are going down market. Wineries who had all their eggs in the wholesale basket are in serious trouble and trying to get a direct market established. So it was the right plan, just a bit backwards.

I still think it’s important though, and we still want to get that market going, we’ve just decided it’s best to do it ourselves. One of the things that was a bit shocking in the distributor world was how little the sales people really knew or even cared about wine. When their accounts suddenly got difficult, they had no idea how to open new ones, or even how to sell to their existing ones. Their only response has been ‘lower prices’.

I’ve worked with sales in my day job for 20+ years, and I KNOW, that any sales guy who opens with ‘lower prices’ as a plan when faced with a tough sale or an obstacle basically sucks. No better way to say it. Want to find a bad sales guy? Find one who wants to lower prices. (Another sign of a looser is someone who wants to give away maintenance, but that’s another rant)!

So we’re going to find our own sales guy or gal. We’re going to give them 100% of our support and get them going. When we have them off the ground, we’ll evaluate other cities. Right now the hardest part of expanding is licensing in other states. It’s no small task, and we don’t want to dilute our efforts by distracting time and resources on that just yet.

If you want to take our wine around and show it, that’s great, that’s how we get most of our business. If there’s a restaurant or retailer that wants it, we can figure out some way to get it to them. But for now our focused efforts are going to be on the Bay Area.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/fbh/1469120211.html

One of our goals for 2009 was to establish a presence in the local market here in the South Bay. We tried a couple of local distributors, but were not happy with the results and I fired the second one on October 1st.

Rather than try a third, we decided to do it ourselves. We hold a type 17 and type 20 permit from the State which allows us to wholesale our wine directly. We’re going to do that. Our biggest draw back has been neither Stefania or I have sales experience and we both have very limited time with everything else going on.

If you know anyone who is interested please have the reply to the listing above.

We spent all day yesterday in the winery getting several wines into barrel. Today we went back for a few hours to finish up some minor tasks and do a punch down on the last wine we still have fermenting.

First up for today was to totally fill the Chardonnay barrels. As the Chardonnay is fermenting it creates a lot of gas, and bubbles so if you filled the barrels completely wine would explode out the top. As fermentation slows down you keep adding a little more wine until it’s completely done, then you top off the barrel.

We used this wine to top up the last air space in the barrels. If you’ve been following since September, then the wine, finally looks like wine!

I’ve started to do a lot of my topping the really, really old fashioned way. Today we use a lot of air systems to fill barrels, either pumps or nitrogen systems (same tanks used for soda and beer). The last few times I’ve topped I’ve done it with a bucket, a funnel, a hose and gravity. No real reason for this other than it seems to create less mess, and also seems gentle on the wine.

Here is the Chardonnay in glass. It sill needs some aging, and we will fine it to get it a little clearer, but it’s really wine now.

Yesterday we put three different wines into barrel. The 2009 Haut Tubee went into one two year old Burgundy barrel. The 2009 Splir Rail Syrah went into a one year old Ermitage barrel and a one year old Seguin Moreau Burgundy barrel. The 2009 Chaine d’Or Estate Cabernet Sauvigon went into 3 new French Sequin Moreau Bordeaux barrels, a one year old Sequin Moreau and a two year old Sequin Moreau. We were only expecting to fill four barrels so the fifth was a happy surprise.

Stefania would not look up for the picture, but here she is prepping a Burgundy barrel. Before they are used they have to be filled about 1/3 with water so they will swell back up and hold wine. It’s a lot of muscle in the process, first you stand it on it’s end (they weigh 100 pounds empty and about 250 pounds when 1/3 filled with water). Then after 30-40 minutes you roll the barrel over onto its other end. Finally you flip it on it’s side and let the area by the bung swell up. When the barrel stops leaking, its ready.

I took this picture so everyone would know what I mean when I say ‘Ermitage’. It’s the brand of barrel. They are 3 year air dried French barrels that are supposed to go very well with Syrah.

This is kind of another random picture. Last year our friend Jay asked us what we do for temperature control during fermentation. I looked at him like he was speaking Greek. I think and he could tell I had a confused look on my face.

“Nothing”, I said.

We don’t have to in general. The location of the winery and angle of the crushpad combined with the small lots we do means the wine stays between 65-75 degrees while fermenting without any additional effort on our part. Sometimes we might get a reading in the low 80’s when fermentation is going really strong but in general we worry about too cold not too hot.

We do have a chiller if anything gets to warm, but it just never happens. More often I’m worried about it being too cold and we have to haul out some heat lamps and put them around the tanks to get them warmed up. That’s pretty unique in California, most wineries have to worry about temperature control, but our location is very unique.

Another random picture. My boots as harvest season closes out. They are stained purple now from pressing wine. I actually wear slippers while driving and put the boots on at the winery. They are too dirty to drive in or wear in the house. This isn’t a minor expense. I need size 15 boots, and finding a good waterproof pair that also fits the three toes on my left foot that don’t bend anymore is very hard. I usually have to buy a new pair each year at $150-$200.

I took these two pictures for Dan and Therese Martin to show them how small our crush pad area is. We had to break up our harvest of grapes from them into two different days and I wanted to show them why I couldn’t process everything in one day.

We’re coming down the home stretch now, and Stefania says she’ll get some more pictures up soon.

This is really when fatigue sets in for us. We’ve been going now for 2 months solid, and things that are not 100% essential just seem to fall off the radar. We’re still getting the dishes done, and the bed made, but after that, a lot of things are ‘extra’ and just have to wait. That’s why we’ve had so few blogs lately.

A “Normal” day isn’t possible this time of year. Just when you think things are wrapping up, another crush.

I was supposed to finish up shipping orders this week, but instead we rushed off to rent a U-haul pick-up truck this morning then headed right to the winery to prep for crush tomorrow. The winery is 45 minutes north of home, the vineyard we are picking up grapes from is 30 minutes south of home. So…all the way up to the winery for prep, then all the way back down the valley to drop off bins. Makes for a long day, especially with the time change…seems like it gets dark around 3pm.

I can also tell when Paul is tired and still trying to post Blogs to keep everyone looped in to the goings on at the winery this time of year. Here a typo, there a typo…I’m not going to correct them now.

New Orleans was a blast, I have photos I want to post as well. Ingrid was very generous with her wine(s) that we shipped to ourselves for ‘wine hour’ in the courtyard of the rental. I was away the following weekend during the cabernet harvest to see friends in New Mexico. My best friends husband surprised her with a “proper” engagement ring (they’ve been married since 1990) and to reassert his love and devotion to her. The catch: Those of us that traveled to be there as part of the surprise, had to ride the tram to the top of Sandia Peak, 2.7 miles, UP.

I’m glad I did it, but I will admit I was nervous about it. I also have photos from that to share.

We hosted a small pumpkin carving party before Halloween and kudos to my mother in laws boyfriend Bill, he brought me wallboard cutting tools to use and they were perfect!! Yes, I have pumpkin pictures too somewhere I need to pull. I told you, it’s not a normal time of year, it’s very moment-to-moment.

To recap today: I did get another 15 boxes delivered to UPS for shipping, picked up the rental truck and a pallate jack, lunch at La Penita (beer and tacos), then I took Brix readings of the wines fermenting now (syrah, estate cabernet, haut tubee blends). Paul moved the crusher/destemmer and pump and hoses, I stirred the lees in the chardonnay barrels, we hooked up the equipment, then I washed the big tank that is outside and prepped it for tomorrow….you get the idea, it’s a long complicated day and it didn’t involve a single paper jam at the copier or a TPS report.

At Martin Ranch we were greeted by a sticky and tired Therese. Her first words were, I wish I wasn’t in this business on days like today!!! We all laughed and agreed that harvest and crush are brutal. I said I liked it better when this was Paul’s hobby and not my job!!!

I am going to make sure we arrive early enough tomorrow so that I can pick the prickly pears and get some margaritas going this weekend. That was the old routine, Paul did all the work, I futzed around with cactus fruits…

I’ll see about photos tomorrow from crush and other non-sense I’ve rambled about.

Vacations never last long 🙂

We had continued the daily routine of punch downs and checks on the fermenting wine with Millie and Jerry doing the assistant winemaker duties while we were away. Saturday we were back at it again.

This year we bought 1 1/2 tons of Santa Cruz Mountains Syrah from Ian Brand. I worked with Ian while he was at Big Basin Vineyards and he manages this 17 year old vineyard. We’ll see how the fruit turns out this year. It may go into the Haut Tubee or if it turns out well I’ll bottle it on its own.

This is all the area we have to process fruit. Millie, Jerry, Ysidro and I handled just over a ton. The yield was a little light, just about 1.5 tons on the 1/2 acre site and Ian had promised 750 pounds to someone else. I was happy with how the fruit looked after processing and it’s now in a bin waiting for the wild yeast to start fermenting it.

It was also time to press the Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon and two batches of the Haut Tubee. We used the big press for the Crimson Clover. This is the juice coming out ‘free run’ from the press before we actually turn it on and start to squeeze the grapes. I usually press very lightly. The yields are so low in all our vineyards that I don’t want to force out tannins from seeds. The grapes have enough flavor due to the small yields without pressing hard.

You want to keep enough juice in the tray that you don’t risk spoiling it with oxygen. This is a pretty good amount. The wine is then pumped inside to another tank to settle for 24-48 hours before going into barrel. While I watched after the press Stefania got the barrels ready. The juice smelled and tasted fantastic and I think the Crimson Clover vineyard will become a favorite of a lot of people.

We had just about 40 gallons of Haut Tubee to do so I did that in a small wooden press instead of the big bladder press. It seemed like most of the day was spent cleaning up as the bins, both presses, barrels, fermentation bins and tanks all had to be cleaned. We also had to set up the crusher for the next day and prep the bins for our next pick.

We had a fantastic trip. Thursday the 16th when we arrived was very hot and humid, but the other days where great. The 17th was our anniversary and the 19th was my birthday. We came back on the 20th.

For everyone who thinks I never leave the French Quarter, I took this waiting for the street car in the Garden district after visiting Magazine Street and walking the Garden District a bit.

Our friends Ingrid, Amber, Bill and Yukari came along this time for the trip. We rented a small condo At Dauphine and Orleans in the heart of the quarter. It was a perfect location. The condo was a converted slave quarters with a great court yard. Every afternoon we had ‘wine hour’ for everyone.

Stef and I had at least one meal each day at Coop’s Place. Monday night for my birthday I wanted their fried chicken and Jambalaya. We also had a great dinner at GW Fins Friday night and Dickie Brennan’s on Saturday. Pizza at the LPK and oysters at the Bourbon house were some other stops we made again.

Stef and I also got to visit with friends we’ve made over the years and catch up. It seems like every year we spend less time walking around and seeing things and more time catching up with people we haven’t seen in a year. Here I am relaxing in the courtyard before going out for the night.

This was breakfast one morning. Pralines and Sauternes. I love pralines!

And I think we had a total of just two hurricanes this trip.

This trip is always a highlight of the year and I’m glad we got to get away from harvest for just a bit again to enjoy New Orleans.

These are some terms we use from time to time. For winemaking veterans they are familiar but I we though it would be worth going through a few of them:

punch downs – During fermentation of red wine the solids in the vat (grapes and clusters) get pushed to the top of the liquid by the CO2 created during fermentation. In order to keep that ‘cap’ from drying out we take a tool and ‘punch down’ the cap back into the liquid 1-3 times per day. Since the color and flavor is also in the solids and the alcohol in the juice helps extract these, it also helps with flavors.

taking readings – we check during fermentation to see how much of the sugar still needs to be converted to alcohol. We may also check the pH and TA of the wine.

carboy – 5 gallon glass container

The bottom quarter of the carboy is mostly solid gunk, and on top of that an almost equal amount of wine. -This is called ‘falling clear’ a term we may use from time to time.

lees – the solid bits left in the juice from fermentation, and pressing. They will ‘fall clear’ over time.

stainless tank – We use stainless steel tanks of different sizes in the winery. Stainless steel is ideal because it is easy to clean and flavor neutral.

stuck wine – It’s rare, but sometimes fermentation can stop with sugar still in the wine. The wine is then ‘stuck’. The danger is that bad yeast, bacteria and other yucky things can start feeding on the sugar and ruin the wine.