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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.

We did sleep in a get a late start yesterday. Stef and I are not big breakfast eaters so we skipped anything in the morning to save up for this:

A Chicago style deep dish pizza from Gino’s East. It’s a long patient wait (45 minutes) from the time you order until it shows up, and you shouldn’t have much more eating planned for the day. We did more shopping in the afternoon getting in a few miles of walking before heading back to the hotel.

The Art Institute was open late on Friday, until 9PM. We headed over about 5:30 and spent a few hours there. There is a newly opened Modern and Contemporary wing and we checked that out. The new addition is very nice and it’s more open than the neo-classical design of the old building, with great views of the city and park.

We spent a good amount of time going through a special exhibit about wine from ancient times to modern times and the art associated with it. This is a famous piece of Greek pottery that you’ve probably seen if you have any books about wine that include a history section.

Most of our time though was spent in the Modern and Contemporary section. A good section of cubism.

Lots of abstract expressionism, including a really good selection of pieces from artist like Jackson Pollack, just before they went fully abstract, which for some reason I didn’t take a picture of, but got this one instead.

We then walked back at dusk through the park to visit the Bean.

A lot of people where trying to get angles of the bean without people in the picture, an almost impossible task, but I think the entire point of the Bean is that people interact with it. As you approach it, it actually looks like you are inside the Bean.

We finally got a little hungry again around 10:00 PM and after a drink at Catch 35, we grabbed a wedge salad from Morton’s. We got back to the room pretty late, with tired feet, another fun day in Chicago.

It was rainy and cool in the morning so Stef and I spent about an hour in the hotel gym. We had lunch at Catch 35 right next to the hotel, then headed down Michigan Ave. for some shopping. I miss Marshall Fields, but we did hit a few favorites and popped into the Apple store. I only took one picture yesterday, a day view from our room.

We had a nice get together from 5-7 and opened one of every wine we’ve made. The Pinot Noir went fast, I didn’t get any. The Uvas Creek Cabs also showed very well. We then headed off to dinner at Flemings for more tasting. We had about 12-15 1999 California Cabernet’s and a selection of other wines. Flemings set us up in a very nice private room and we had great service.

We closed the night back in our room again with about 8 of us finishing off the Cabs. I finally got into bed about 1:30. Today we’re off to the art museum and still haven’t finalized dinner plans. I’m leaning towards deep dish pizza at Gino’s.

Tonight we will be pouring our wines for friends in Chicago. Yesterday was a travel day. Not a bad one overall. There is a direct flight from San Jose to Chicago that leaves at 1:20, so we had a relaxing morning before the hell that is airports.

I’ve learned to just laugh. And point. Come on, you’ve been on the plane with this guy. There is at least one of him on every flight. It’s a mandatory FAA regulation. 4 people, 11 carry ons, 4 that will not fit into any bin. In fact I often wonder how it was all transported to the airport, it wouldn’t all fit in my car.

This went on for 14 minutes, then we sat on the runway waiting for a new departure window, since we had missed our original one. Planes need bouncers. At minute 3 of trying to get settled in, the bouncer should give a warning. At minute 5, they just fling you, and your 97 pound carry on, out the door.

The flight was ok for summer travel. Just 15 minutes of bumpy thunderstorm, 45 minutes of whining children and one baby who cried for just 217 of the 243 total minutes of the flight. Ear phones on the iPhone are a blessing.

This is why we grow great grapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A great sunny day, with the fog hanging just of the coast keeping things cool.

We got downtown to our hotel about 8:30. This is the view from our bedroom window.

Big thanks to Jack B. for setting up the hotel. We hurried over to the Frontera Grill for margarita’s and some fantastic food. The best way to end any travel day is with tequila.

Last year I wrote this blog about this time of the season:

http://stefaniawine.blogspot.com/2008/09/these-are-times-that-try-mens-souls.html

We’re in it again. The nets are on and done, the grapes are thinned and the work in the vineyard is done. Now we wait, and worry, and worry and wait. We’ll have a heat spell for sure before it’s over, and a threat of rain too I bet.

Now we’ll try to focus on other things and let the grapes be grapes and do what nature does with them. We’re headed to Chicago for a 5 day vacation and a big wine party this Saturday. Thursday night we’ll be pouring our wine for friends in Chicago. When we get back we will pick up the gym routine and make the final training camp push before harvest.

Right now our focus will be on getting ourselves ready for harvest. The grapes, they will take care of themselves. It’s time for us to stop being ‘helicopter parents’.

We are headed to Los Gatos tonight as one of the featured winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains at Restaurant James Randall.

http://www.restaurantjamesrandall.com/Upcoming_Events.html

This will be my first winemaker dinner and I’m very nervous. Excited too, and a little giddy.

I booked a table for five tonight; joining Paul and I are Kathy and Millie, and Millie’s sister Ila who is here on vacation from Colorado. When we aren’t putting her to work we treat her to good food and wines, lots and lots of them.

Last year when Ila was here she helped plant new vines at an installation in Morgan Hill. It doesn’t sound like very hard work, but let me just say this: When your day to day work lifestyle has you at a desk in front of computer, anything above and beyond an hour in the field is exhausting. I know. It took me a couple of seasons of working in the vineyards before I was able to make it past a couple of hours.

When our summer intern came to help out, Paul insisted she break for 15 minutes after each hour of work. “Sit down in the shade, consume some calories or a sport drink, and make sure you get water in you”.

I wonder if I’ll talk about that tonight…I have no idea what to say to a room full of strangers.

Well anyway, I’m looking forward to it, I think it will be a good time.

There are still some open tables available if you are interested, call to make a reservation and we’ll see you there.

Cheers!