Review from SCM/SCV Wines

A nice review from Dave Tong:

http://scmwine.blogspot.com/2009/01/2006-stefania-uvas-creek-cabernet.html

I think Dave provides by far the best coverage of local wines, certainly better than the Mercury News, and I know that last year the Santa Cruz Sentinel was going to him as a primary source for information.

I’m trying to schedule a time for Dave to come out and do some barrel samples, but with the crazy few weeks I’ve had with my day job it’s been difficult to get the time.

How the Haut Tubee Comes Together.

We just finished bottling our 2007 Haut Tubee a few weeks ago. I’ve talked before about how it’s made and the process we go through at fermentation; doing small lots, treating each one as unique and then doing the first round of blending after press.

As the wine ages we also make additions to the blend from the other lots we have. In 2007 we started out with our base wine. We had 1 1/2 barrels of wine from the harvest at our home and the Ottigurr Vineyard. Mostly Syrah, with some Grenache, Zinfandel and Mourvedre in the blend. Enough to make about 35 cases again.

Our first addition was late last Spring. We had 9 barrels of Chaine d’Or Cabernet Sauvignon, one barrel of Elandrich Cabernet Sauvignon, and 4 barrels of Harvest Moon Cabernet Sauvignon. I knew what I wanted to do was blend the Elandrich and Harvest Moon together for our Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon. I also wanted to make sure we’d have enough topping wine to get us through until bottling, and I wanted to increase the percentage of new oak a bit on the Chaine d’Or.

So we pulled samples from all nine barrels of Chaine d’Or. It’s not a simple process though of going, “this is best”, we’re looking for something called ‘typicity’. Typicity means the wine taste typical, like it should. So we were looking for two things. First which one barrel tasted most typical of the Santa Cruz Mountains, but did not have distinct Chaine d’Or typicity. Second, what was the best barrel, that had the least typicity of either Chaine d’ Or or the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was hard but we identified two barrels.

The first barrel was blended in with the Harvest Moon and Elandrich to become Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet. The other barrel was split. Half went into the Haut Tubee blend, half became topping wine.

Our next blending choice was a few weeks before bottling. We wanted to sample all 9 barrels of Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah we had. Again we were looking for typicity first; what barrels tasted most like Eaglepoint, and very important for us, what tasted like our Eaglepoint, since we think our version of the vineyard is more floral and less brooding that other peoples. It was difficult to do, and we did a lot of blending of samples as well, but we finally picked out a barrel we didn’t think was typical.

It turned out the barrel was a special experiment I had done in 2007. It was a new Hermitage barrel, specially designed for Syrah and given extended air aging. The wine was actually spectacular. It had dark fruit with rich mocha and toasted peppery notes. I thought it was very simliar to wines from Betz in Washington or the ‘scorched earth’ notes of La Mission Haut Brion. A great barrel of Syrah. But, it wasn’t typical for us. It did not taste like our Eaglepoint Ranch, and when we blended it in with other samples, it brought a smokiness to the wine that we haven’t had in 05 or 06.

So we decided that that barrel would go into the Haut Tubee. The end result was pretty amazing and it gave us much more Haut Tubee than we had in 2006 when we had to limit people to 3 bottles each. We’ll release the wine in the Fall this time, not the Spring. With the dose of Chaine d’Or Cabernet it will need some extra time in bottle, and it’s a more serious wine than the 06 version. More suited to cold winter nights than hot summer days. Still appropriate for the hot tub though, and it will still be $20.

A First Review on Robert Parker’s site.

We’ve had lots of people post tasting notes about our wines on CellarTracker, Wine Spectator, Wine Library, Vino Cellar, Chow Hound, and Wino Depot, but I think this is a first on the Robert Parker site:

http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/showthread.php?t=192707&highlight=stefania

Not sure why we’ve never had a lot of chatter there, I know a lot of our regular customers visit the site. Maybe it’s just we are a little more casual and relaxed about wine than the tone of the Parker board? Not really sure.

Anyway, Jeff has been a long time supporter from our very first release and I’m glad he put the note up. Check it out!

A Few Party Pictures

Early morning and the pork butts (4 of them) go on the smoker.

I like to use old barrels to smoke with. By the time we cut up a barrel, it’s about 9 years old. I put the cut up pieces with the wine section facing up so it creates a wine steam in the smoker.


Getting the line up ready for everyone to arrive. A couple of the highlights we opened were a 2005 Sea Smoke Ten. The first bottle was corked, so we went to a back up. A 2004 Modus, 2005 Match Cabernet, Betz and Lewis Syrah, and a bottle of our 2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet. In all it looks like about 35 bottles where opened, including a late night run into the cellar for a 2003 Girardin Echezeaux.
There was also a fair amount of port, brandy and Scotch opened to go with cigars after dinner.

Stef ready for everyone to arrive. 


The pork hits the counter. I did 4 racks of ribs also, and there was pigs blood, pig’s ears, and bacon. About 35 pounds of pork total I’d guess. I’m having salad all day today! 

 

 

This morning will be clean up and a trip to the gym 🙂 

A Pruning Primer.

Giving a primer after pruning is done may seem weird but it really is better to see finished vines. I hope this will explain some of the terms we’ve been blogging about over the past month.

This is a young vine after pruning. This particular vine is two years old. At this point you want to leave two buds on a spur with the idea of growing two canes for the new year. In California we are usually able to get to this stage after one year, but this particular vine is in the shade on our front porch.

Here’s a good close up of all the parts. The lighter wood is last years growth, the darker wood is older growth. Last years growth was called a ‘cane’ after it grew to full length. Right now as you see it pruned, with two ‘buds’, it’s a ‘spur’. The rings around the new growth and the small dark bit sticking out are the ‘buds’. They will grow this year into new ‘canes’ and will be the part of the plant that produces fruit.

These are the ‘head’ trained vines in front of our house. Head training is when there are multiple ‘arms’ coming from one ‘trunk’ and each arm contains ‘spurs’ with ‘buds’. On these plants we’ve left one spur and two buds per arm. Most head trained vines have many more buds left, but we train these up a single poll and tie the new canes upright, so we leave fewer buds. Usually in California the canes are left to flop and that creates a ‘bush’ like look. So those are often also called ‘bush’ trained. In the northern Rhone valley the vines are tied up a single stake, and that’s how we do it.


This is the last of the original Haut Tubee vineyard in the front yard. Each vine ready for new canes to grow, and you can see the single post they will be tied to.


In the backyard we are converting the head trained plants to a V.S.P system. That means Vertical Shoot Positioning. We are retraining the vines into a ‘cordon and spur’ system. Below you see the first step. We encouraged a new shoot from an old vine and have pruned it back to two buds. These buds will produce a cane each that will be tied to a wire, called the ‘fruiting wire’. After one more year the wood will be older and that will become the ‘cordon’.


Here’s what it will look like after one year. This vine has two ‘canes’ pulled down and tied to a wire. The buds will send up shoots this year, and next year those shoots will be pruned back to ‘spurs’.


At this point this training method is actually called ‘Guyot Simple’. Named after the 19th century Frenchman who invented it. The cane is pulled down and will send fruit producing shoots. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are often trained this way. One spur is left on the vine and next year the cane that spur produces will be pulled down and tied up this same way after the old cane is cut off.

We won’t do that here. We want the canes to become cordons and produce spurs. This picture gives an idea of the ‘vertical’ in V.S.P. We have nicked out the buds that face downward (That’s where the phrase ‘nick it in the bud’ comes from.) This will only leave shoots going up, or ‘vertical’, and into the supporting wires.


This picture is at the Church Vineyard. Here you can see the start of ‘spurs’ on a three year old plant.

And the final picture of the new Haut Tubee vineyard. There will be 25 Cordon and Spur trained Mourvedre vines in a 5-wire V.S.P. system. Now you know what all that means.

The Lifestyle

I’ve been mulling this over for a couple of days now. Our friend Wes loaned me a copy of “From Ground to Glass”, a winemaking video with great scenes and fantastic interviews with winemakers. One of the common themes that kept coming up was “The Lifestyle” and how many people felt blessed to be able to live it. I was trying hard to figure out what that really means. How does that translate exactly?

One thing I stopped saying last year was “Good Food, Good Friends and Good Wine” because I kept seeing it everywhere I went. It was in print in a food and wine magazine, on the wall at Trader Joes, and on at least two other winery websites. But as tomorrow approaches and Paul and I get ready to celebrate St. Vincents Day with friends, it really comes down to that.

We’re going to smoke some pork (with used barrel staves), there will be homemade bread (I’m leaning toward rosemary rolls), and other treats that our friends are bringing.

The best part will be having a house full of friends, the food will nurture our bodies, and the wine will complement it all.

The lifestyle is a combination of many things, it’s not any one thing or moment in time. It’s pruning in January and observing the vineyard at the beginning of the season, it’s watching the buds break, the flowers bloom, and the fruit set. It’s having parties and breaking bread. It’s sharing our craft at lifes celebrations, cheering each other on through good times and bad, having a tangible good to share with others. It’s very personal. It’s time spent in the winery or the lab, it’s time spent washing barrels, tanks, hoses, and pumps. It’s being hands on. It’s cuts, bruises, and scrapes. It’s friends showing up to help in any capacity or situation. It’s the support and encouragement from friends, family, others in the industry, everyone we meet. It’s being up at sunrise and harvesting then processing until after dark. It’s late night pizza parties when we’re still dirty and unwashed and totally exhausted.

It ends up sounding corny, but I do feel blessed to have this opportunity to connect with so many people on so many different levels. It’s great to feel a belonging to a community, to my local community, and one on a much larger scale.

The economy may suck right now but we’ll always have food, wine, and friends to share it with.

And that, in a nutshell, is The Lifestyle….

Paganalia Again

Last year I did a short post about St Vincent’s Day, which grew out of the Roman holiday of Paganalia. It’s that time of year again. Today is Paganalia.

This year the natural cycle seems to be working better for us. The first full moon of the year came on January 10th this year, giving us 11 days to prune, vs the one day we had last year. We didn’t get it done in a day last year of course, and the vines seemed out of cycle all year.

The weather also cooperated. We had sun and moderate temperatures all through pruning. We didn’t have a drop of rain. Good for working outside, but I’ve been a little worried about the lack of rain. Then right on schedule it started to rain yesterday.

Bottling went very well, and we got out offer letters with out incident. I think the only thing we’re hoping for is good sales. We need that to keep things going of course, and we’ve heard many wineries are struggling right now.

We really wanted to purchase some new equipment this year. A shaker table for the de-stemmer, and a lift – sorting table combo. Right now though we’re being conservative and holding off on those things until we see how the next two releases go. We still may decide to pay down some debt instead of getting the equipment. We just aren’t really anxious to take more bank financing with things the way they are, and would rather hold off or offer equity in the business for the money to buy equipment.

Hopefully the moon will keep cooperating, and it will all work out in 2009.

Quiet Nights at Home

Our label says “We enjoy wine with friends, over special meals or on quiet nights at home.” When we started making wine it was really important for me to make wine that fit our lifestyle. Stef and I like to open a bottle before dinner and have a glass as we cook. We will then sit down and enjoy the wine with our meal, and Stefania in particular like to have just a little left at the end of the meal to savor.

That means the wine needs enough friendly fruit to stand on its own, but enough balance and acidity to go with food, and finally enough complexity to be interesting when the meal is over. That’s exactly what we’ve tried to make.

The funny thing is we rarely get to drink our own wine on those quiet nights. Most of the time we open a bottle it’s a hectic social event, or a busy wine tasting. We might get to sneak a little sip, but we never get to savor an entire bottle.

A few nights ago though, we decided to make a point to open one of our bottles with a simple dinner we made.

I bought some head on prawns at an Asian market near my work and Stef spiced them with a New Orleans / Cajun style rub. I grilled them over a hot grill and we would peel and eat them right from the skewers.

Stefania loves “plain white rice”, so I made us a small pot. The sweet starch of the rice would help cut the heat of the shrimp. She just bought me these silly plates with cows and pigs and chickens on them. I think they are so kitchy, and I love them.


Stef had put the kitchen tractor to work and we would have some fresh baked, hand made bread also.

I opened a bottle of our 2006 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and poured us a little in some nice glasses. We enjoyed a little wine as we cooked, then with the simple dinner, and just enough was left to savor at the end of the meal.

It was a simple Thursday night dinner, just the two of us. Just what we are talking about when we say; “quiet nights at home.”

Winter Release

Tuesday we will be mailing out our Winter Release letter.

It will be our first 100% Santa Cruz Mountains release, our 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains.

Our Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet is from two vineyards on the eastern side of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. Grapes from both vineyards were harvested on 10/20/2006 by hand in the early morning. The wine contains 94% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Harvest Moon Vineyard and 6% Merlot from the Elandrich vineyard. The grapes were 100% de-stemmed but not crushed and then co-fermented.

Fermentation went well and the wine was pressed on 11/2/2006 then transferred to two new Seguin Moreau French Oak barrels and two older French Oak barrels. The wine spent a total of 21 months in barrel before being bottled. Final alcohol was 14.0 % with a pH of 3.81. 97 cases were produced.

The wine is dark ruby in color with a distinct nose of mint, eucalyptus, and crushed berries. The wine is plush and long on the palate with currant, berry and dark ripe fruit. The wine shows a long and full finish with fully ripe tannins and spicy notes that compliment the deep, dark fruit. This wine promises a long life in bottle.

Three packs will be $120, with 6 packs at $220.

We’ve increased allocation amounts for many people this time around. With such uncertainty in the economy we think some people may be cutting back, and wanted to offer those that purchase a chance at more wine. This wine just won a silver medal at the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition. The first wine we’ve entered in a competition.

Chaine d’Or Pruning

Yesterday we tackled our biggest pruning job the 22 year old Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon at Chaine d’Or. Last year this vineyard took us over 3 days to do. There were a lot of plants in the process of recovery from Eutypa that needed retraining. We were also converting everything over to our strict method of leaving two shoots on each spur and just 8-12 spurs per plant.

Here our crew is in the middle of the vineyard working on a section of Merlot. We started the day with Jerry, Estella, Ingrid, Amber, Wes, Stefania and I. Axle was there to play with the dogs, and just as Amber, Ingrid and Wes had to leave, Kathy and Millie showed up.

The sun was out, but it was cool, so we stayed covered up to avoid sunburn and stay warm. Jerry is working on a Cabernet vine here. You can see the limited number of shoots we keep on each plant. This increases ripeness and sun exposure and intensifies the fruit. This plant is very small and not typical of the vineyard. The vineyard has a very tough turn and most of the plants in the turn, like this one, have been hit by the tractor at one time or another and had to be restarted.

These plants are more typical of the gnarled old vines in the vineyard. This is a section of Cabernet after the crew has passed through. We also made an effort last year to lower the spurs as much as possible. After 20 years some of the spurs were into the first set of wires.

Now that we have the Eutypa out of the vineyard, we’ll return to the practice of leaving the cuttings in the middle of the rows. We will then run the tractor over the cuttings with the mower attached and create a mulch. That will return the nutrients in the plants back to the soil. Last year we hauled out all the cuttings to avoid any Eutypa problems, but there were no infected plants at all last season, so we feel we now have it out of the vineyard.


As the sun dropped a little fog came out in the mountains and made for a great end to the afternoon. The crew whittled away to take care of personal errands and Stefania and I left Jerry and Estella at 4PM to finish up one last row. We had to get home to clean up for a 6PM dinner. We gave Jerry Sunday and Monday off. What took us over three days last year, took just one this year.


That’s a great sign that we have the vineyard in the kind of shape we want it. It was easy to prune, with few corrections to make, no suckers to deal with, and no excess shoots. Just 8-12 spurs, 2 quick cuts per spur and on to the next plant. As I pruned I was pretty excited by the prospects for this season. So far the moon cycle and weather have been perfect. Our crew is fast, efficient, and really knows the vines. We are only two weeks into the year, but I’m feeling good about the shape we’ve got each vineyard in and the pruning we’ve done is setting us up for a good start.