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I’ve spent some time recently thinking about what we are going to do regarding allocations for our first few releases. It looks like we’ll have more people who want wine than we’ll be able to handle. Our very conservative business plan was to have 150 mail order customers by the end of 2007. I figured 1/2 of those would buy wine, an average of 6 bottles per year, or 3 bottles per release per buying customer.

It looks like we’ll be way ahead of those numbers by April of 2007, much less December.

I’d like everyone who signs up before our planned April release of the 2005 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah to be assured of getting a bottle. I also like the practice of Brian Loring at Loring Wine Company, and Randy Sloan at Match Vineyards of allowing customers to buy bottles in single quantities up to their allocation, so I’m going to do that for sure.

So I really think the limit is going to end up being four bottles per person. We’ll give people the option of requesting more, and if we have the bottles, we’ll get them out to those of you who have asked for 1/2 cases or even full cases.

We also will bottle six magnums of the 2005’s. Two we are keeping for ourselves and we’re planning on the other four bottles being thank you gifts for those of you who order your full allocation and request additional wine. It will be our way of thanking our first and best customers.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I get asked often what wines go well with Thanksgiving Dinner. The anwer is ‘none’. There really isn’t any wine that pairs with the traditional rich and sweet Thanksgiving dinner. At least not in the classic way of pairing.

The holiday is also one where you’re likely to have a lot of guests in the house who don’t drink wine often. The complexities of an aged Burgundy are likely wasted, and Aunt Mildred isn’t going to be impressed that you opened that $200 bottle.

So keep it simple is what I recommend, and open some crowd pleasers. Pull out wines with bold fruit and easy textures. Oaked Chardonnay’s are a favorite of many, and if you can’t bring yourself to buy a bottle, try opening a Viognier. The white wine drinkers will love the floral nose and sweet fruit. Avoid Sauvignon Blanc, it’s spiky acidity is off putting to many who don’t drink wine often.

For reds I always open a Zinfandel. For one it’s the most American of wines. It also is full bodied and fruity, another crowd pleaser. Syrah or a Shiraz from Australia will have many of the same qualities. While many new style Pinot Noirs from California would fit, you should know what you are opening before hand. A bold wine from Sea Smoke would make everyone happy, but a Chambolle-Musigny like wine from Windy Oaks would puzzle many of your guests.

When the pies come out, bring out some sweet treat dessert wines or better still a nice Brandy.

Every year we host a harvest party in our backyard. The highlight is a grape stomp. I put out about 600 pounds of grapes in a 1/2 ton bin and let our friends go at them. Everyone has a lot of fun and we end up with a lot of juice.

A couple of years ago Stefania thought of the name “Haut Tubee” for the resulting wine. A take off on the hot tub in our backyard and a little play on one of her favorite wine La Mission Haut Brion.

This year we ended up with one full barrel of Haut Tubee. Besides the Cabernet grapes from the stomp I blended in a little of the wine from the house. Some Syrah, Grenache and a tiny bit of Mourvedre. It’s all in barrel now at Chaine D’or with 1/2 barrel of Zinfandel that I just finished up today.

There’s a pretty good chance I’ll blend all of it together into what used to be called a Mistra Negro in California, a ‘dark blend’ or field blend of red grapes. Right now my plan is to give it away. We’ll give some to everyone who came to the harvest party and stomped the wine, and we’ll likely give some to people who order our first releases of wine as a thank you gift.

It tastes pretty good at this point, and doesn’t have even smell at all like feet.

A couple of weeks ago I had a few visitors in from Florida who wanted to barrel taste our 2005 wines. Things where a little crazy at Crushpad and I ended up setting up a little serving area out on the loading dock, on top of a one ton bin. We tasted through each wine and each barrel treatment and did a blend of barrels to get a final assesment.

Stefania couldn’t join me so she asked if I could bring a little wine home for her to try. I ended up with about 1/4 bottle of both the Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah and the Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon left over.

We sampled a small glass of each when she got home from work, and then put the bottles aside to make dinner. Later that night I poured a glass of each as we went to bed and took them into the bedroom to enjoy as we watched the late hockey game.

It was the first time I’ve actually gotten to drink our wine. Every other occasion has been a ‘tasting’ either a rather stressful technical assesment at the winery, or walking visitors through the wines. In that atmosphere I’m more concerned about what is going on technically with the wine and make choices on what to do. It’s been an intellectual exercise, not a pleasurable one.

So sitting in bed that night I was really amazed. The wines are damn good. I couldn’t get enough of the Cabernet. It was savory, and well balanced with a great texture and nice Cab fruit. I kept going back to it until the glass was drained.

It was a totally different experience. Just getting out of the cramped noisy conditions at Crushpad and having the time to really savor the wine and enjoy it was fantastic. Both just tasted damn good.

Finally had a chance to get through all the seasons pictures. It’s been so busy, but I got them organized finally. There are too many to share here, or on the website at http://localhost/wordpress/, so I’ve used bubbleshare.

Pressing “Haut Tubee”

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85803/overview

Harvest Party!!!!

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85812/overview

Moving Barrels

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85802/overview

Chanine D’ Or Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85797/overview

Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85804/overview

Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah Harvest

http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/85818/overview

We really did take a lot of harvest pictures this year. Maybe too many in fact.

Instead of posting them all here or at www.stefaniawine.com I’m going to put a bubbleshare page together and provide a link. That should be done by tomorrow night.

I’ll be back blogging every 2-3 days as well. We took a few days off this weekend to recover and relax but I’ll be back at it now.

Saturday we had a rough day at Chaine D’Or. There were supposed to be 10 pickers, and only four showed up, then two left early to go install a lawn! That left us with just two people to pick. Stefania and her friend Kathy came up and helped finish the last rows and Jerry and slowed crushing down enough to get out and help pick also.

It lead to a very tiring day, probably the most tired I’ve been yet making wine.

We had a nice birthday dinner with friends Saturday night at Alexander’s in Cupertino and enjoyed a few great wines: 1998 Grand Mayne, 1999 Leoville Barton, 1997 Caymus Special Selection and the highlight a 1996 Latour.

Daylight savings on Sunday was a nice break, and extra hour of sleep before heading out to harvest Zinfandel and remove the last of the brid netting. We had had to leave the netting on the Merlot the week before to get to the winery in time, so we took that off as well.

We took the Zin up to Chaine D’Or to make there and cleaned up the equipment from a busy weekend.

Kathy, Millie, Yukari and Bill all came over on Sunday afternoon to watch the Sharks play, and Stef made a traditional dish from Chile. We had a few more nice bottles, a 98 CdP, a VGRoth Cab from the 80’s and some Syrah’s I pulled out before finishing the evening with a little scotch and some noice cigars. Sounds like a late night, but I was asleep by 7:45!

2006 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah – Mendocino County

Went into barrel today. Really good dark color and showing a good nose. I used two different yeasts this year, both that bring out more floral smells, and it looks like it took in bin. It looks like we’ll be about 14% alcohol with good sound acidity again like 2005. I filled 5 full barrels, one new French Oak, two two+ year old French Oak, one once filled American Oak, and one twice filled American Oak. That should work out to about the equal of 25% new oak that worked so well in the 2005. We also have 32 gallons of toping wine or about 1/2 barrel. That should be about 130 cases of finished wine.

2006 Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon – Santa Clara County.

This looks like a rock star so far. I changed up yeasts here too and went for a more open nose. It went into bin at 24.5 BRIX and 3.65 PH. That’s exactly perfect for me and should end up about 13.5% alcohol. The color is very dark this year. I didn’t do a cold soak this year, I thought that lead to color issues last year. It has an amazing fruit nose right now for a wine half way through fermentation. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, this may be the best wine we’ve made so far. I think we’ll be at 5 full barrels and I’m planning on two new French Oak, 1 one year old American Oak, and 2 two year old American Oak. Pretty heavy Oak, but I think this wine will handle it this year.

2006 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon (with 5% Merlot)

Typical for the Santa Cruz Mountains this year this came in with sound BRIX (25.1) but low acidity (PH 4.0). We’re having to correct the acidity as it ferments, that’s just to low for what we are after. It’s got a SCM nose right now, a mix of fruit and minty flavors. The challenge now is to get the acidty fixed and lock in the color. It was slow to start, almost 24 hours more than the Uvas Creek to start fermenting. We’ll watch this like a hawk. It’s got all the stuff to make a great wine, but we’ll have to stay on top of it. The Eaglepoint and Uvas Creek are making themselves, but this one will require sound winemaking. This will get about 1/3 new wood I think.

We still have Zinfandel to go. I’m hoping we get enough fruit for a full barrel, and will pick that Sunday and make it at Chaine D’ Or.

I really hoped to have more updates as we harvested, but the reality of 12-15 hour days set in quickly. I fell asleep at a friends house Saturday night watching the Sharks game with a glass of Port in my hand.

In all I think we put 700 miles on rental trucks and probably another 500 on our own cars these past two weeks. As I was driving over Highway 17 Friday, I started to think about Stefania’s late father, Lt. Cl. Fred Von Gortler. He was a career Army officer, and I thought about something they teach at the War College. The saying is “Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, professionals talk about logistics.”

Last year I said the key thing I learned for the season was how important leadership and a chain of command is in a winery. This year my leason was: “It’s all about logistics.”

Basically you make your wine making plans well in advance. I keep my options open though, and make choices based on the fruit as it comes in and we start to work with it. It all comes down to logistics though. You have to have everything in place, and move everything around effectively to make your choices happen. If the fruit is low in BRIX, you need to have the lower BRIX yeast at the winery already. You think the fruit needs destemming after tasting the stems, you better have the destemmer clear. You want the best fruit in the state, you better know how to drive a truck.

These harvest weeks really come down to how effectively you can manage the logistics of moving fruit around. I think that was really clear to me on Saturday as I worked with Bill and Ted at Uvas Creek to load the truck, and a couple of homewinemakers stood by. They wanted to talk about what yeast I would use, if I’d cold soak, what kind of barrels I had, and all the little details. I didn’t have time to shoot the breeze, all those options where already planned for, I just needed to move the fruit and make it happen, I had to get on the scales by noon.

Amateurs talk yeast and cold soaks , professionals talk trucks and bins. That’s the key thing I learned this year.

Just a fast note on where we are at:

Friday –
7:30 AM pick up a 15 foot truck
9:00 AM arrive at Martin Ranch to pick our 1 1/2 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon
Noon: arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:30 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
1:00 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:30 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM load the truck and drive back to Uvas Creek
5:30 PM arrive at Uvas Creek and drop of the bins
7:00 PM arrive home – a twelve hour day

Saturday

Up at 4:00 AM
4:30 AM load up the FLPB (mine are Purple not Yellow) and drive to Portola Valley
5:30 AM begin removing bird netting
6:30 AM start picking and loading Merlot at Elandrich in Portola Valley
8:00 AM finish pick and drive to Uvas Creek
9:30 AM load up our two tons of Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon
11:30AM arrive at the scales for an official weigh in of the truck
12:00 PM drop of the grapes at Hallcrest in Felton
12:30 PM return to the scales for an empty weight
1:00 PM back to Hallcrest to crush the Cabernet and Merlot
2:30 PM add yeast and start the fermentation
3:00 PM Wash out the bins
3:30 PM press the Eaglepoint Syrah and get it into the settlement bins
6:00 PM head home
7:00 PM arrive home- fifteen hour day

Wish us luck!