Blog – Page 7 – Stefania Wine

September 25, 2013

Field Testing

Right now we’re doing a lot of testing and sampling. Sometimes we have Millie go out and bring samples back to us at home. When we’re at the winery we gather samples from that vineyard and test there. Most of the time though we go out and get samples and test them right in the field. The back of the FJ Cruiser is a completely odd assortment of gear right now. Both Stef and I have a change of shoes and socks in the car, there’s some dirty shirts, some mostly clean sweatshirts, tie downs, peanuts, apples, bottled water, a trailer hitch, plastic bags (for samples), clippers, and an assortment of test equipment and gear.

When we arrive on site we take out the plastic bags and start walking rows. Usually we walk every row picking berries from both sides. We then meet back up and combine the grapes. Stef smashes them and strains the juice. The first test actually happens as we pick. We’re tasting as we go. We’re also checking for the toughness of the skins. If they are tough, the tannins in the wine will be tough. Once strained we want to see most of the seeds brown and the juice should be reddish. Really unripe grapes will have brown juice. The picture below I would call brick red.

Next we have this handy field temperature and pH meter. The temperature is important because it will effect the other readings. The pH meter is usually + or – .10 degrees from our experience. If in doubt we’ll run a full test in the lab, but usually it gives us a good feel for the acidity.

We like to run a hydrometer and refractometer test. They hydrometer tends to be more accurate. The picture below is actually from the day after we were in the field. We always bring the samples home and let them soak overnight then retest. With not ripe grapes there’s not much of a difference, but grapes over 24 Brix can soak up 2-3 degrees pretty easy. THis reading is right at 20.

Somehow Stef got a picture of the inside of a refractometer. This is from the same sample and shows a slightly lower Brix of 19.1 That’s why we like to do both tests.
$refractometer$

And this is what you do after you’ve driven 112 miles round trip in stop and go traffic to get samples you knew probably were not close to ready but had to anyway because the vineyard owner was ready to pick in two days of you didn’t test.

September 19, 2013

Pictures from the Chardonnay Harvest

Last Saturday we picked Chardonnay at Chaine d’Or. I posted most of these pictures real time on Facebook on Saturday in real time. I’ll try to do the same again this Saturday as we pick at Crimson Clover but I know getting a signal there is even harder than Chaine d’Or. The day started at a decent hour for picking. I was up at 5:45 and we were in the car at 6:33 and 60 degrees. We did make a stop for coffee and arrived at the winery at 7:15.

Jerry and the crew had arrived at 7 and were already at work getting the nets off. Stef and I had prepped and cleaned the winery and equipment the day before so there was no additional work that morning other than getting started picking.

The fog hung low around the vineyard well into the early afternoon. I was able to help with a little of the picking before switching to my regular job of driving the tractor and picking up the full bins for processing.

The grapes looked really nice coming in. Some were very golden. The upper section of the vineyard gets more sun and those grapes usually are riper than the grapes from the lower section.

After driving the bins up in the tractor I dump them into the press. I started doing whole cluster pressing last year.

I did take a short break from the bin dumping to run down into the lower section of the vineyard and pick the ‘rouge’ Pinot Noir I wrote about last week.

After pressing the wine is pumped into this large chilled tank to settle for 24 hours. That helps the juice separate from any solids.

The dogs watch the entire process. Sofie on the right was a puppy in 2005 when I first worked at Chaine d’Or so this is her 8th Chardonnay harvest.

On Sunday we went back up to the winery and transferred the settled wine into an inside tank to start fermentation. We’ll let it burble in here until it reaches about 12 Brix. The tank is chilled to keep fermentation between 60 and 70 degrees. Once we reach the 1/2 way point on fermentation and the temperature is not likely to spike up we’ll transfer the wine to barrel to finish fermentation.

Final numbers on the wine looked great. Brix was 23 exactly and pH was 3.36. We expect a smooth fermentation and the wine should turn out like the 2008 version based on the numbers and handling so far.

September 15, 2013

New Wines Released

I’ve just put up the details on our Fall Release:

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We have 4 wines we’re releasing, two of them brand new. Offer letter will go out to Mailing List Members this week. Anything left will be available for web orders on October 31st. I’m particularly excited about the Mourvedre. It got great reviews in Chicago where we opened two bottles in August. We do have a Chardonnay from 2012 but will be releasing that as well as our 2012 Pinot Noir in the Spring.

September 14, 2013

More Vineyard Visits

I wrote about the visit and testing at Chaine d’Or we did on Saturday. We also visited a small Syrah vineyard in Los Altos Hills that the owners now maintain all on their own and visited a potential new site in the Gilroy-Watsonville Road area. For those out side of the South Bay, Gilroy and Watsonville are two small towns south of San Jose. The irony of the Gilroy-Watsonville Road is it goes to neither Gilroy or Watsonville. We finished up the day at the Crimson Clover vineyard which is in the town of Morgan Hill behind the big hill everyone things is named Morgan Hill but is really named El Toro. Whoever named things in that part of the valley was definitely trying to confuse people.

Sunday we watched the Saints game in the morning. They seem to have their defense figured out this year which was encouraging. Then we headed to the Mineral Hill vineyard to watch the 49er game with the vineyard owners there and check on the grapes. This will be a hard one to figure out when to pick because the vines are just three years old and a vineyard that young tends to have a great deal of variation from plant to plant. Stefania says it’s really year 7 when the vineyard starts acting like a vineyard, and stops acting like a collection of individual plants.

The grapes planted here are Mourvedre and the yield looks to be pretty high. I’m sure some of the clusters won’t make it and will dry up and some will not be ripe and have to get cut off so probably 75% of what is on the vine now will make it into a fermentation bin. The vineyard is over an ancient creek bed and water still flow under ground so the plants are particularly strong for being three years old. I’m thinking we will pick here right around the 1st of October.

One last picture from Crimson Clover on Saturday. The vineyard tested at 22.25 Brix. Flavors are well past the green state and in between red and black fruit. We set the pick date as September 21st, which is in the normal to early range for the site. With the weather pattern we expect to pick right around 24 Brix. Yield here looks average for the site and I think we’ll get just under two tons. We will also pick the ‘Roxy’ Vineyard at the same time. Roxy is a mix of Syrah, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon that we put in the Haut Tubee Blend. Yield there looks high this year, close to a 1000 pounds. That would be cool actually if we got that much as we could keep the vineyard on it’s own through fermentation and into barrel.

September 12, 2013

Samples and Rouge Pinot Noir

Saturday Stefania and I logged 112 miles on the FJ Cruiser checking on vineyards and getting samples to do lab testing on. We started at Chaine d Or testing Chardonnay. We tasted the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the vineyard as we went but it’s really too early to do lab tests on those grapes yet.

We walk each row of the vineyard and pull berries from each plant, going back and forth to get each side of the row and each exposure. We also try and mix up the berries from the middle, bottom, and top of the cluster as well as pull from clusters in full sun and those on the interior of the plant. The idea is to get a sample that shows the entire vineyard not just those berries that are in sight. Stef is holding a white bucket that we use to gather the berries as we go.

At Chaine d Or it takes one person about an hour to get samples. Two people takes 30 minutes so we split up. It’s also important to taste as you go. That’s a good way to train your taste to recognize what the grapes are at in terms of lab readings. You sample 20-30 grapes in the vineyard, then go back and test and it’s instant feedback and learning. In this case the Brix was under 21 and the pH was 3.25 so now we both have an excellent idea of what the maturity level tastes like.

We’re also checking on secondary indicators of ripeness like brown seeds and brown stems on the clusters. Since each plant is getting a quick look we can also check for any issues. On Labor day weekend when I went out I noticed small amounts of Botrytis or Grey Mold in the vineyard. Under the wrong conditions this can be a disaster unless you spray right away. With the weather we’ve had though I though we would be ok. It’s been very hot and I know temperatures over 90 degrees will keep the mold from spreading and just shrivel the berries that have been effected making them very sweet and introducing the unique Botrytis flavor profile.

The walk through the vineyard confirmed that the mold was all dead and we’ll have about 60 clusters of Botrytis Chardonnay grapes in the wine, which is normal for the vineyard.

One final oddity that Stefania wanted me to take a picture of is a rouge Pinot Noir plant we have in the Chardonnay. It was probably a mix up at the nursery when then vineyard was originally planted. It was actually 4 years before we noticed the plant. The leafs are very similar between Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and the cluster shapes and sizes are also very close.

We kept missing this plant because the Pinot turns red earlier than the Cabernet Sauvignon. We usually don’t net the vineyard until the Cabernet turns color, so the birds were cleaning out this plant every year before we netted and could see the grapes were red and not white. I remember seeing the plant and thinking it odd that the birds would completely clean out one plant and not touch the others around it. That’s not super unusual, it’s how birds attack a plant. They eat one cluster completely before moving to the next and tend to clean out the plants one at a time. Stills it would be odd that they had not eaten any clusters off the neighboring plants.

When we discovered this plant last year it was mostly eaten but there were a few clusters left that helped us identify it. We made an effort this year to get it netted early and will use the grapes in our Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot. Chaine d’Or also has a rouge Zinfandel plant in the Chardonnay and a group of plants we are pretty sure are Pinot Gris in the Merlot section. The birds love Pinot Gris and most of those get eaten early every year.

September 10, 2013

Dinner at Our Place

Every year we make a donation to the Washington Open School in Santa Clara. Usually we do a case of wine or a couple of magnums. Last year they asked if we could do something bigger so we offered a wine dinner at our home. The package was a four course dinner paired with our wines and we were told it brought in a huge bid. We had the winners over on Friday night and Stefania prepped the house and dinning room. We’re still trying to figure out what art to put in the living room so for right now the chalk boards to track football scores are in the space along with the banner for the Roller Girls.

We started in the living room and bar with some fresh fruit and a selection of cheese. I opened our unreleased 2010 Chardonnay and the just bottled 2012 Chardonnay. We wound through the what would be five courses and a dessert on the patio about 11PM. I started with a Caesar salad with grilled shrimp. Then Stefania had a soup and I followed that with lamb chops over cabbage and mushrooms in red wine. I added a few slices of home made sausage to the plate. We finished with Filet Mignon and summer squash.

We put a dent in the wines working through some unreleased wines and some from our library. I though the 2011 Nueva Casa de los Padres was the highlight. The 2006 Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon was also really good and I was surprised that the 2012 Chardonnay wasn’t showing any bottle shock.

We really enjoy putting together dinners. Charity events are a rarity but for friends coming into town it’s something we try and pull together. It might not always be as many courses but it will always be something good!

September 9, 2013

Crawdads

Nothing really wine related at all for this post other than I was on my way back from the winery doing punchdowns when I stopped at Ranch 99 Market. That’s a large Asian market in the Bay Area. My objective for the trip was to pick up some ribs for dinner. The pork there is always much fresher than what I can find anywhere else. I also bought some pork belly to make bacon and browsed through the seafood section.

Ranch 99 can be a bit of a challenge for me. Most of the guys there who are not Asian are ‘in the way’ while they shop with their Asian girlfriend or wife. At the store on Wolfe Road and the one near my day job in Milpitas though they mostly recognize me and will help me at the counter. The first few times though trying to buy a fish I actually had to hold the fish up to get my turn in line.

The Chinese granma’s though are another thing. I get bumped, jostled, pushed and prodded to get out of the way. It helps once I have a few things in my basket or if I hold up a fish! One thing I’ll always look for is live crawdad’s. They are not always in stock but when they are I’ll buy them. The crawdad took a long route into the Asian Market. It’s a New Orleans and Louisiana specialty that was picked up by Vietnamese fisherman who immigrated to Louisiana. When I get crawdads I actually attract a small crowd seeing what I’m doing and how I’m picking them out (get the live active ones). It’s all really fun though and the boil always makes me miss New Orleans.

September 7, 2013

Dim Sum Cellar

Bottling is a particularly busy time of the year. There’s lots of work and it requires lots of hands. We’re lucky to have friends who come out and help on the days we need them to. The days are long and the work is terribly boring. We usually keep everyone doing the same task so it can be 8-10 hours of just sparging bottles with nitrogen and lifting them on to the filler.

We don’t always stop for lunch too if we’re bottling and the line is rolling we’ll just go right through. We might stop for a few minutes for water, and bathroom breaks but as soon as the forklift can move one lot out of the way we’ll usually start on the next lot. If there is time though we will stop and have lunch in the cellar. Usual winery food is to order in pizza, or run out for burritos our sandwiches. The pizza and burritos are not really an option in our location and the sandwich thing gets boring pretty fast. For our last bottling our friend Ingrid fixed that problem by picking up Dim Sum on her way to the winery.

It can be a challenge though, as we don’t have tables and only two chairs so we improvise. Stefania laid some towels over a completed pallet of wine. A few buckets turned upside down worked for chairs. This actually worked out as a great lunch idea. It was filling but not heavy and easy to set up and clean up. There were a few beers cracked, which you can probably see below. Beer fuels winemaking in the Fall, that’s for sure.

September 5, 2013

2013 Harvest Update

A quick update on where we are for 2013 harvest. We brought in our first lot of Pinot Noir on 9/1 which was eight days earlier than 2012 and a month earlier than the very late 2011. Weather has been good and the vineyards look excellent with a decent crop load.

One thing we’ve noticed this year is the grapes look to the eye more mature than the chemistry on them is showing once back in the lab with samples. The Chardonnay at Chaine d’ Or was a good example. It looked as I walked through the vineyard like harvest would be 9/8 or 9/9 but in the lab the Brix was 20.0 and pH 3.05. We’re actually likely to pick on 9/14. When we tested the Mourvedre at home it was the same story. The grapes looked like they would be ready in 2-3 weeks, but Brix tested at 18.2. It will be 4-5 weeks before the grapes are ready.

I’ve not really seen this before. Usually I have a good handle on visual, with taste and chemistry but in 2013 the visual is ahead of the taste and chemistry. That’s ok though just likely going to be different from most years where the chemistry is ok and then we wait a few weeks for flavor to be where we want it. This year I think we’ll be getting flavor at the same time the chemistry is right. Normally we just test until we reach 22 Brix and 3.3 pH then go totally off of taste. This year we’ll have to watch that both are on mark at the same time.

September 3, 2013

Chicago

At the end of August we made our semi-annual trip to Chicago. We actually go more often than every other year but those other trips are usually for my day job. This particular trip was all for fun. Our friend Otis hosts a blow out wine party and that would be the main event on Saturday night.

We arrived in town to great weather. There were a few thunderstorms on Thursday but other wise it was perfect. Below is the view from our hotel room along the Chicago River.

We arrived Wednesday afternoon in time to check in to the hotel and walk into the River North area to try out a place new to us called Havana that Stefania spotted on the way in. We had a light dinner and a few cocktails including a really good Pisco Sour.

Thursday was our one ‘working day’. We had a long lunch at the Frontera Grill while we waited out the thunderstorms. We then went to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy wine glasses and then Fox and Abel for cheese and salami for that evening. We hosted a get together of about 15 local Chicago friends and customers to taste 15 of our wines. I brought older vintages and the 2011 Mourvedre and 2011 Santa Clara Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which we’ll release in a few weeks.

We were scheduled to run from 6 -8 PM but actually went from 5:45 to 11:30 PM!

Friday was all about beer. We started the day at Binny’s buying a few things we can’t find in California. The Goose Island brewery is right next door to Binny’s so we had another long lunch there. We met up with a friend who also happened to be there for lunch and he took us to another small beer focused bar called The Map Room.

Saturday we walked down State Street from our hotel and ended up at Hugo’s Frog Bar. A friend in California had highly recommended it and our bartender Chris happened to be from New Orleans. We had a great time and I worked my way through the Bourbon cocktails starting with a Manhattan.

Next up was an Old Fashioned. We had a big long lunch with frogs legs, a wedge salad and gumbo soup. Stef got the prime rib sandwich and I had a rib eye. We ordered a 2001 Cos d Estournel to go with lunch. It would be our only meal of the day so we went all out.

Saturday night we took a small bus up to Northbrook and enjoyed dozens of great wines on a beautiful Chicago night. We had to hurry home on Sunday for work instead of staying to Monday like we’d usually do but had a nice lunch at Purple Pig and flew out Sunday evening.