We definitely go through writing phases and neither one of us has been in one so far this year. We’ve been busy though with a few trips including a great 10 day adventure of hiking in Southern Utah. We’ve been keeping up on the vineyards and all the 2012 and 2013 wine in order. We had a good spring release which we never even put up here. The order page is updated though with current inventory.
If there’s something you’d like though that’s not on the inventory page send us an email. I have about a dozen different wine right now that are showing 1-3 cases in stock. Not enough to put on the web page but we could check for you if there’s something you really like.
We’re heading to Crimson Clover tomorrow to tuck the wines there. The weather so far in 2014 has been great. We thought the drought would effect yields but so far it looks like we’re on track to have about the same amount of fruit as a typical year like 2012. We’ll have a Summer Futures offer out soon and then a fall release around Sept 15th. It will be our first wave of wines from 2012.
We are also doing a new diet and fitness plan, with lots of hiking and we’re averaging 12-18 miles a week. I’ll see if the writing bug picks up again this summer. We’re expecting a little easier harvest this year than last so maybe I’ll even get some writing in at harvest.
The sun did not last long enough in the vineyard but it was a warm day and we were actually glad for the shade in the late afternoon. In the summer time we won’t get this shade in the vineyard. With the sun higher in the sky the vineyard stays sunny until just before sunset. By late afternoon it was just Jerry, Millie Stef and I doing the work. We were all slowing down some and even Jerry took a break.
As I said in the last blog you put on a lot of miles carrying out the cuttings from the vineyard. The picture below was of the pile at about 4 PM with 3 rows still to go. At this point it’s about 5 feet tall and 15 feet in diameter. The cuttings have to be carried out in small bundles. If you try to pick up too much they become hard to control and you drop them along the way. We’ve tried tying them up, using a wheelbarrow and lots of other tricks, but in the end just making small piles as you prune seems to work best for everyone. Millie likes to put her’s on a blue tarp and drag them along as she goes. She then drags the entire tarp out of the row to dump. It saves bending over, but is hard on the arms to pull along.
The extra hours on Saturday tough were worth it to take Sunday off. We were able to hang out in the back yard and enjoy a cigar and an Old Fashioned. Our hands were sore for a few days and legs and backs also, but the Old Fashioned helped.
First pruning of 2014 was at our Crimson Clover Vineyard. We didn’t head out too early. There’s no sense in trying to prune when it’s dark, but it was cold that morning. The temperature actually dropped to 34 when we arrived at the vineyard. There would be six of us pruning; Jerry, Millie, Stef, my cousin Susan and her husband Andre and me. Susan and Andre wanted to learn what it was like so we had coordinated with them to come and do a couple rows with us.
There was frost on the ground when we arrived but as soon as we got moving everyone warmed up. The sun game out over the vineyard by 9 AM and we were all warm pretty fast. Most years we count on pruning this site as a two day job. The hardest part is what I call ‘pick up sticks’. That’s picking up the cuttings and carrying them out of the vineyard. It’s bending over 100’s of times and grabbing the small sticks, then carrying the cuttings to a burn pile outside the vineyard. This year I put an App on my phone to chart how much ground I’d cover in the day. It actually drained one battery and I had to switch to my work phone to finish. The grand total was just over 9 miles walked for the day, all in a one acre space.
Below is the happy crew at work. Happy because it was still early and the sun was out. You’ll notice that everyone is on their own row. We learned this pretty early. Pulling the cuttings out of the wire can me dangerous for any bystanders. They can come out like a little whip and draw blood if they hit skin. At very least it stings. You’ll see no one is working the same row and no one is right across from anyone else. I’m the worst person to work near by unanimous vote, because I’m the strongest I’ll pull things out of the wire that everyone else would cut out. No one wants to be close by when I’m pulling on a really stuck cutting.
There where a lot of cuts to make at Crimson Clover this year because we were reestablishing spurs on many plants and that meant instead of the usual 16-25 cuts per plant we were doing 30+ on every plant. Everyone had sore hands the next day. 3 PM is usually our stopping time for vineyard days but when 3 PM came we were down to the last 6 rows and we all decided we’d rather work another couple hours rather than come back the next day for 2 hours work. I have a few other pictures on the second phone I’ll get up soon.
I’ve had the 2007 Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon up for sale at our ordering site since the Fall Release. I’ll be taking it down this week to get ready for our upcoming Spring Release. There are a few cases left so please order soon if you’re interested. Recent notes on this wine have been very positive and it’s ready to go for drinking now!
In blogs and release letters I’ve often talked about the red volcanic soil that we have in a few of our vineyards. It really does not happen in the Santa Cruz Mountains very often. On the west side of the mountains the soils are mainly sandy and sandstone based, that’s part of why I think the wines there can be light in color. On the east side of the mountains the soils are clay and fractured limestone. Every now and then though there’s a rare streak of red volcanic soil.
This is actually much more common in the band of foothills to the east of the Santa Cruz Mountains proper. In the southern part of the range those foothills are called the Santa Teresa Foothills and our Crimson Clover vineyard is in that chain. There’s some of that red volcanic soil at Crimson Clover and I’ve always thought that was a key to the high quality of the site.
Our Pinot Noir vineyard is on a knoll of red volcanic soil in the northern part of the foothill chain. So far the wine from that site have been unusually dark and tannic for Pinot Noir. I think that’s the soil in play. I love this soil and wish we could find more sites with it.
Just before Christmas Stefania and I went on a seven mile hike in Santa Teresa Park, which surrounds the highest peek in the foothills. That peak is called Coyote peak and is just over 1100 feet. Our hike took us from the base of the hills at 90 feet to the peak. Along the way there’s an old horse ranch and I took this photo of an old barn.
On the way back down we took the trail below and I thought this was a great shot of just how rare and elusive the red soil of the Santa Teresa Hills is. In the foreground the trail is dark brown. This is a heavy clay soil we have in the valley floor below. It turns black when it’s wet and holds a lot of water. Our Mourvedre in the yard at home loves this soil but Syrah has never really done well in it.
Half way down the trail though you see the color of the trail change. That’s not the lighting, that’s a band of red volcanic soil. You can even see the little raise in the hill where the lava once flowed. The band lasted for about 70 yards on the trail and then was back to black clay. The photo will enlarge if you want a bigger view of it. Next time we’re in the park I’ll take a close up of the transition. It’s pretty dramatic.
We’re almost ready to get back to work. Harvest and barrel work ended the earliest ever for us in 2013 and we really enjoyed the extra time off. In 2011 we finished all the harvest and winemaking related work on December 18th. In 2013 we finished on October 26th. That two months really made a difference in feeling rested and having some time away from the vines and winery.
I had two weeks off from the day job over the holidays so we decided to go to the Oregon coast. We first went in 2007 to visit with Pinot producers who were making Pinot Noir we liked. On our way home we found the little town of Newport and ended up going back there the next year. We did the drive from San Jose in one shot, all 670 miles in a single day. We left at just after 6AM and the weather was clear except for fog in central Oregon.
This was the view from our room. We got a small place with a kitchen so we could cook and relax.
The town has a beautiful bridge that was built in the 1930’s in an art deco style. Of all the bridges along the coast this is my favorite. There’s a small bay with an active fishing fleet and some processing plants and a small assortment of shops and restaurants. Because the town is small and 2+ hours from Portland it’s managed to stay fairly un touristy for a seaside town. The big business in town is fishing and then the NOAA boats that are home ported there that you can see in this photo.
The bay has an oyster farm, they were fantastic and up river a bit a lumber mill. The other big business in town is the Rogue Brewery and we spent a fair amount of time there. Ok we went every day. It was about a 3 mile round trip from our place to the Rogue public house so it seemed that going to get a beer was a perfect excuse for a walk.
We came back on the 2nd in one day also. The weather was clear the entire time back except for morning fog along the coastal mountains. There was almost no snow on Mt Shasta or Mount Lassen that we passed on our return. We’ve had a very dry winter. I went back to the day job on the 6th. Our office location moved and to avoid a 90 minute commute I changed my schedule to come in at 6:15. I get good sunrises, but the parking garage is just not the same as the boats!
We’ll be back at work Saturday pruning the Crimson Clover vineyard. We rally enjoyed the time off!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love to cook turkey and stuffing and everything that goes with the meal. For years now we’ve hosted what we call ‘refuge’ Thanksgiving and invite over anyone who is far from family (or looking to avoid family). It’s always a great time. I also have always loved the day after. There’s nothing better than leftover turkey and college football and hockey are on from 7 AM until 10 PM. I look forward to that lazy Friday.
One of the things I’ve loved the most about Thanksgiving is it’s avoided the commercialism that takes over every other holiday. There are no gifts to buy, or dinners to book or really any excuse to spend money on things we don’t really need, so I’ve hated the ‘Black Friday’ curse that’s gotten worse and worse over the past 10 years. I boycott Black Friday and don’t spend any money at all, especially at retailers who force their employees to come in at 3 or 4 AM or even worse on Thanksgiving day.
There has been a response to this though called Small Business Saturday, and I like that idea. We usually go to an arts and crafts show on that Saturday and support people making things by hand themselves. This year we thought we’d participate too. Running Saturday through Monday we will offer 25% off all our Library wines. I’ve dug through the inventory report and pulled everything we have enough of to offer for sales. In some instances there are just 2-3 cases of a wine left so things may not last. We’ll have three wines from 2006: Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah, Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, and Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon. From 2007: Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah, Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and from 2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon.
To get the 25% off enter the code SBS (for Small Business Saturday) at check out. I’ve entered exact inventory numbers into the system so as soon as a wine sells out it will stop showing on the website. Happy Thanksgiving!
So – It’s been more than a month. We finished harvest on 10/12 at Chaine d’Or. The earliest we’ve ever finished by 16 days. It was the biggest, best, earliest, harvest ever for us and from what we’ve heard and read for everyone in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley. We worked hard in the winery from the 12th to the 15th and then spent 6 days in New Orleans. We came back to finishing fermentation’s and completed all the pressing and barrel work by the 27th.
We also got a trip to Nashville in and otherwise have been laying low. We are doing a gluten free diet right now and no cocktails to try and avoid the post harvest 15. I had a bunch of pictures on my phone so thought I’d get them all up. First one is the press running the day before the Chaine d’Or Harvest. The timing was perfect. We had a few lots finish just as we needed the space.
I’m not really sure what I was taking here. It’s a hose in a barrel soaking t up so we can use it. Barrels dry out and won’t seal after a while so they have to be soaked back up before use.
Wine in the collection tray. Stefania loves it at this point.
Our pallet mover – which has been the best piece of equipment we’ve ever bought.
This was the day of the Chaine d’Or harvest. Not too early but cold. The stuffed shark is our driving warning. ‘Don’t move the shark’ is the rule when going up the twisty road to Chaine d’ Or.
More fog pictures and Stefania getting the pruners ready for the crew.
Everything is ready here for the fruit to start coming up.
I always try and pick at least one bin of grapes when we get started. After the bins start to fill I get busy hauling bins and running the crusher so don’t usually get to pick past the first 20 minutes.
At Chaine d Or we keep everything in the 30 pound bins through the entire process.
This is a view I rarely take pictures of. It’s a section of the property I only access on the tractor. This morning I stopped the tractor to take this picture of the vineyard.
Axel looks grumpy but he likes getting all the cash before Christmas. This was the first year he really helped out through the entire process. We’d lose him in past years to playing with the dogs or running around the vineyard but this year he wanted to help with everything.
Cabernet raw.
This is one reason we love the pallet jack so much. We can move the fermentation’s inside where the temperature is easier to control and it’s much easier to keep out bees and leafs.
Final picture was of a full barrel of ‘Roxy’ Cabernet/Zin. The vineyard owner was excited that we might be able to do his wine on its own for the first time without blending with other vineyards.
I know Stefania has a bunch of pictures she wants to get up so hopefully those will come soon. Look for a special sale too for Small Busines Saturday from us and Winter Futures will be out right after Thanksgiving also.
I realized it’s been 14 days since the last update. In general the busier we get the less we write. I know Stefania has a bunch of pictures to get up also but she’s been just as busy.
In the last update I wrote about the Crimson Clover and Roxy harvest. We brought in about twice the yield from those two vineyards that we’ve ever had before. Some was the season and some was new plants at Roxy starting to yield. I was exhausted the Sunday after that. I carried 90% of the 3 tons of grapes we had out of the vineyards on my shoulders. At one point Sunday I just had to go sit in the car for 30 minutes out of the sun.
At some point the following week I took this picture below of an old fashioned. Not sure what day it was or exactly why but it was on my camera. The days do get kind of blurry.
The next weekend we went out again to pick some of the smaller vineyards that were ready. We planned on doing the rest of Roxy as we’d left the Zinfandel there for another week to get riper. We would also do Red Hen and then the Harrison vineyard in Los Altos. The day before we go pick we get the crush pad staged which is the picture below. All the equipment comes out, gets re-cleaned and covered. We also make sure we have any of the supplies we will need for picking and transport.
Then the large bins and picking bins are loaded into the trailer and tied down. Each big bin hold 1000 pounds. I like to keep the smaller vineyards separate at least until we’re done picking, just in case one has enough grapes to do on its own. So we use a large trailer with three bins and do no more than three vineyards in a day.
The first day actually went fine. We picked Roxy fairly fast and loaded a good amount of Zinfandel which we decided we’d add whole cluster to the Cabernet already in vat fermenting. Red Hen was not so great though. Stef took a lot of pictures there but I took none as I was removing the nets. The nets kept the flying birds out but the chickens ate about 50% of the grapes.
At the Harrison Vineyard they had a group of friends picking so I just had to carry the bins out of the vineyard. They had about 750 pounds of Syrah in all that we also decided to do whole cluster as the start of the Haut Tubee fermentation. We were able to get out of the winery, home, showered and to the Roller Derby by 7:30 that night.
The next day did not go as well. We picked Mourvedre at Mineral Hill with the though of making a Rose from it. We knew there was too much fruit and it wasn’t going to get ripe enough to make a red wine. I figured there was about 1000-1200 pounds and 5 of us could pick in about 45 minutes. Turned out there was over 2400 pounds and I carried it all out 30 pounds at a time. By the time we headed for the winery I was pretty beat. As we processed and took lab reading we realized there wasn’t going to be a high enough sugar to even make a rose. The kicker for the day the was I got hit in the head with the large must hose as we were cleaning up and knock down hard. I ended up missing a day from the day job and had mild concussion. I’m ok now and will have more about the next weeks activities tomorrow or Saturday.
By now this is a really familiar picture. Start of the morning in the FJ Cruiser. I was up at 5:45. Crimson is not far from our home compared to some other sites so leaving at 6:37 we were actually the first ones on site at just after 7AM. Millie had come the day before and removed all the chopsticks from the netting so the first task would be to remove the nets. Normally we’d have Jerry and Gil remove the nets and everyone else would start picking. The weather was drippy and wet though with mist coming down and clouds all around the vineyard. I kept checking the hourly weather update (which showed clear from 8 Am until Noon) and watching the clouds. Everyone pitched in to take the nets off.
There was a little moister on the leafs but the clusters where staying dry. They really looked fantastic. We don’t generally leaf pull. I prefer to get dappled sunlight on to the grapes rather than direct sun.
About 8:45 we got the clearing that we needed in the clouds and I sent the crew out to start picking as fast as they could. Clouds hung around the vineyard all morning but as volunteers arrived on site they all said it was clear to the north of us, the direction any rain would come in from.
The first bin of grapes. I picked about six bins total. Once the bins started to fill up though my job changes to picking up the bins and carrying them to the macro bins for sorting. Stefania calculated that I walked 12 miles in the vineyard, half of that carrying 30 pounds on my shoulder. In all I carried out over 100 bins on Saturday and over 60 on Sunday.
This is Stef’s usual job on picking days. She’s keeping a tally of the bins as they come in and sorting through the grapes removing any bees, spiders, lady bugs, earwigs, leafs, shoots, grass, water bottles or finger tips that come in. We had a good pick this time with no injuries or bee stings.
I thought we might pick heavy this year. Last year we brought in just under three full bins or about 2700 pounds. That’s 1 1/2 tons per acre and pretty normal for this site. I thought we would get 4 bins this year. That’s a little bit of a logistical challenge because the biggest trailer I can rent only hold three bins, and I wouldn’t want to tow much more than the 4000 pounds a fully loaded rig weighs up and down the mountain roads we have to travel. I figured we’d just come back Sunday though and finish up. The third bin though filled up on row 12 of 23. Rows 18-23 are shorter than the rest so we actually came back for 2+ bins on Sunday or just over 5000 pounds.
There was some drama driving back to the winery. The forecast held and at Noon it started raining again. We had covered the bins though and were already on the road when the rain started. When we arrived at the winery we had to weight about 30 minutes for the misting to stop. We then got everything processed and inside in just about 25 minutes, which was perfect because 5 minutes after we finished processing it rained as hard as I’ve ever seen at the winery.
We ended up with three full fermentation bins of must. That’s a thermometer sticking in the must getting a temperature. Brix was 14 and pH 3.80. Reallly perfect for this vineyard.
We were out of the winery in time to get home and take a shower and visit our friend Ingrid’s house for authentic Chinese food. The ‘pearl’ sausage balls were fantastic and there was a pot of ‘blood and guts’ that I really enjoy. We probably drank too much and ate too much and stayed to late given we had to get up Sunday at 5:45 again but it was fun.
Sunday we returned and picked the rest of the vineyard as well as the Cabernet from the Roxy vineyard a block down the road from Crimson Clover. For the first time there looks like enough grapes from Roxy (about 800 pounds so far) to do a barrel on its own. Usually it goes into the Haut Tubee blend. Sunday was one of those really tough days. At 1 PM I had to stop picking and hauling grapes and just sit in the car for about 30 minutes to recover. When we made it to the winery at 4PM with the grapes Millie was not there yet. We’d sent her to pick up some sandwiches so knew we had about 30 minutes before we had to process the grapes. I took my boots off and put them under my head on the cellar floor and fell asleep.
We ended up staying until just about 8PM. The Chardonnay was ready to go into barrel so while Millie and crew cleaned up outside, Stef and I got the barrels ready and all the wine transferred inside. Sunday’s dinner was traditional harvest food – beer and pizza.
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