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Right in the middle of harvest season, we like to take a little break, and invite all our friends over to celebrate harvest. We make some harvest season treats, and I put some grapes in the backyard for everyone to stomp, and we open 30 or 40 bottles of wine.

This year we had a full house at 40 people. Just about the maximum we figure we can fit. This morning Stefania got a thank you note from one of her friends and co-workers:

“I just wanted to say thank you for the invite…we had a preconceived notion that since we were not ‘Wine People’ we would feel uncomfortable and to put it harshly shunned by the other so called ‘Wine People’…. What we found out the moment we walked through the door was SO the opposite of what our stupid inclinations were (I don’t even know what ‘Wine People’ are anymore). You and Paul are the most gracious hosts and everyone made us feel so welcomed. I can’t even remember the last time I went to a party where I knew virtually no one and felt so comfortable, where people you do not even know come up to you and say ‘Hi I am such and such’ and just start talking to you as if you mattered, not caring that we knew nothing about wine and very willing to share their knowledge or experience. “

That was the best note. One goal we have is to make wine easy and enjoyable for people. We want to put aside all the anxiety and let people just enjoy a bottle with new friends or connect with old friends. “Good wine, good food, good parties and great friends!” as Stefania says. Friends are the key that makes the party, the food, or the wine truly great.

We’re headed out tomorrow to drop off bins and get back to winemaking!

Well we made it back!

What an adventure in truck driving. 5+ hours up to Mendocino County, with the last 5 miles (including 1.5 miles of dirt) on a step mountain road. We picked on the morning of 10/11 before the Sun came up. Four full bins of fantastic Syrah. We had planned on just 3 bins, but I took the fourth just in case Casey at Eaglepoint would let us take more and he did.

The picking crew was excellent and they left any problem grapes on the vine. We loaded back up and drove back to Felton. 6+ hours through 7 counties, across the Golden Gate, through San Francisco, all the way to Santa Cruz to get on a public scale. The grapes went into the crusher with just a minor issue (the forklift got stuck in the field and had to be pulled out). Fantastic fruit, even the crew at the crusher said it looked great.

We 100% destemmed but did not crush the berries, and it went into 3 one ton bins to ferment. I’m using two different yeast this year to see what might work best on this fruit.

The 100% destemming was a hot topic at dinner Tuesday night with Casey and Larry Roberts, a winemaker from Paso Robles. Almost everyone making Eaglepoint Syrah follows Sean Thackery who uses 100% stems, or Wells Guthrie (Copain) who uses 60% stems. I guess I’ll just stand out. I love the pure fruit and floral nose our wine developed in 05 without stems, so We’ll be the mavericks who will go total destem with Eaglepoint. I think the fruit has good enough tannin and complexity on its own.

We finally got home at 9:45 PM on the 11th, and returned the truck yesterday. Today I’m off to Bonny Doon and Elandrich to check on the grapes, then Uvas Creek to drop off a Bin for 1000 pounds of Cabernet we’re getting tomorrow.

And oh yeah some tasting notes have been put up on our 2005’s:

http://www.vinocellar.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=376274&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

http://winodepot.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=6803

After we’re done lounging with some coffee this morning, we’ll be off to clean our bins and get them ready for harvest tomorrow. Then we swing by the truck rental place and pick up a 14 foot box truck to drive to Mendocino. We should get to Eaglepoint Ranch about 5 PM today.

We’ll unload the bins and settle down for a little wine and food with the folks at Eaglepoint and then get to bed early. We’re staying at the Ranch tonight. We’ll get up before dawn tomorrow as harvest starts. Once our bins are full, we load back into the truck and take the 5+ hour drive back to Felton and Hallcrest.

We should arrive about noon. We’ll crush right away and the must will go into T-bins to start turning into wine. The process should go fast and we’re hoping that by 6 or 7 PM we will be able to call it a day.

Stefania will take lots of pictures and we’ll post them here and to our website as soon as possible.

A few frantic phone calls to Hallcrest and Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch and we’re ready!

Tuesday we’ll rent a truck and head up to Eaglepoint Ranch. Casey is going to let us pick our rows out Tuesday afternoon. We’ll stay the night at the ranch and then pick the next morning! Then a drive down 101 to Hallcrest, and John is ready for us. Our first fruit will go into bins this week.

I still have to confirm the truck, and wash the bins but we’ll get that done tomorrow. I’ll also call Casey and offer to cook rib eyes for everyone Tuesday night at the ranch.

We’ll take lots of pictures! Finally, we’re off and running!

After days of cloudy drippy wet weather, we woke up this morning to Sun! The outlook now is for sunny weather and warming over the next two weeks. The tequila worked!

The forecast could not be better. So after a hard week of waiting and hoping, we’re ready to go again. Everything has been pushed back by a week or so it seems. Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch is going to call me today with numbers and set up a picking date.

Uvas Creek sent me numbers on Friday, and that looks like it will be picked the week of the 15th.

I’m pretty excited by what we’re seeing. Sugars are not to high, and acidity is really good. These should be great grapes to make the kind of wine we really want to make. Updates should start to come fast now.

It might seem odd that we list a small get together on Thursday night at our house as a wine event. It was opening night hockey for the San Jose Sharks.

For us it has a very real wine tie in. We had been season ticket holders for the Sharks for many years. We had even worked our way down to the 7th row. Two years ago though we had a tough choice to make. The season tickets are about the same price as the fee we pay the facility we make wine at. So it was Sharks or make wine. We made wine.

We’ve had to make a lot of financial sacrifices along the way. We didn’t get into making wine as a vanity project like so many people, or a way to waste dot-com millions (we didn’t have any to waste), it’s been a tightly budgeted project all along.

We’ve known the risk in that. A big factor in the failure of most new wine projects is being under funded. So we put a tight business plan together. Slow controlled growth, cost containments, limit risks, generate cash flow early, lots of planning to get by on a small budget and focus every dollar on the wine.

For a night it was nice to push that aside though and have some good Pizza and watch the Sharks win in overtime. I miss the games, but it sure would be sweet to toast a Stanley Cup with some Stefania Wine, even if we can’t be at the game.

Yesterday Adam Lee from Suduri/Novy wines posted something he’d heard
form Pinot Noir grower Martin Van der Kamp:

There is an Native American tradtion that the God that brings rain also likes to drink gin. So to delay a rain you leave 1 shot of gin outside and the God then either becomes drunk or certainly distracted enough that the rain is delayed. We will be putting a shot of gin outside the winery tonight and would appreciate it if all of you could do the same at your homes as well. “

We put a shot of gin outside last night as well, and I’ve heard Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch did too.

Right now we just wait and hope the coming rain is light and doesn’t slow down the grapes too much. The forecast is for dry weather in the 70’s after the storm goes through, so all in all the rain may just push back harvest 3-5 days.

Kenneth posted a review and some pictures from the barrel tasting on Saturday. Take a look at:

http://www.kenneths.org/flog/food_and_drink/paulwine.html

And put some gin out if you have it!

We met Anne Anderson of Chaine d Or http://www.chainedor.com/ a few years ago at a tasting event at Copia in Napa, and followed that up with a picnic at the winery last summer. Jerry and Anne took a liking to us and offered lots of great advice as we started our winery.

Last fall Jerry invited me to help with harvest. No small deal, Jerry had turned down all offers of help for over 10 years he let me know. I think our enthusiasm and dirty boots though convinced Jerry and Anne we were serious so I helped with both the Chardonnay harvest, and the Cabernet harvest.

Jerry asked me to help again this year, and Saturday morning I headed out before dawn to get to the small vineyard high in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

This was my view from on top of the crusher. Our Elandrich vineyard is on the lower left, and Ridge’s Monte Bello vineyard is the cloud covered peak on the right.

I’m in charge of the “crush pad”. The grapes arrive and I lift them into the crusher destemmer. Jerry puts the crusher in the truck bed so that we can use gravity to feed the crushed and destemmed grapes into the wine press. The juice collects in the bin below the press and I then pump it into the large tank in the back to settle.

You can see the pump on the right, and the cellar doors in this photo. I use the wheel barrow to haul away the discarded stems.

Jerry on his tractor far down the row. The picking crew loads the tractor and Jerry brings the bins up to me at the crush pad.

Chardonnay grapes fresh in the bin. In the wine business these are called. F.L.Y.B.’s Short for F..ing little yellow bins. They are harder to work with than 1/2 ton bins because each one has to be lifted into the crusher (by me in this case) rather than using a forklift. They hold 30 pounds.

Another task I do is run up and down the rows and push all the FLYB’s into a row. The pickers leave them on the ground when they are full. I then go line them up like this so Jerry can load them onto the tractor by passing down a single row.

4 bins are loaded on the front. I do that. Two pickers then load the back up with 20-25 bins, and Jerry then drives them up to me at the crush pad. One of the crew lifts them to me, and I lift them into the crusher. I quickly remove any leafs or bad clusters before they get crushed.

I had to leave for a little bit at 9 am, but we were mostly done by then. I got back in time to press the juice and finish getting it into tank. Jerry lets it settle for 24 hours before he transfers it into barrels for fermentation. The last task of the day was getting the crusher off the truck. No easy task for sure.

We finished the day cleaning up and Jerry asked me how our harvest schedule looked. I let him know that we were likely going to make the Elandrich Zinfandel at home because there was not enough to make at Hallcrest. Hallcrest has a one ton minimum and we will only have about 1000 pounds of Zinfandel.

He very kindly offered to let us make the Zinfandel at Chaine d Or. So we will have a single barrel (25 cases) of 2006 Elandrich Santa Cruz Mountain Zinfandel from Stefania Wine after all.

Gravel and clay at Uvas Creek that Cabernet Sauvignon loves!

Hand manicured rows at Uvas Creek’s lower section.

Perfect grapes at Uvas Creek

Less than perfect grapes removed before harvest at Uvas Creek.

Taking samples in the lower block at Martin Ranch.

Looking through the refractometer getting BRIX readings.

Cabernet in the morning sun.

The old oak at Martin Ranch

This weekend it was time to check in on all the vineyards.

I started at Elandrich. First checking the netting and making any repairs that needed to be made, then taking BRIX readings to check on ripeness. The Zinfandel was at 20.1 and the Merlot was at 22.2. They’ve been gaining about 1 degree per week. I like to harvest each at 25+ so they are still some weeks away.

Next I got a call from Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch. He had some Syrah ready to harvest Tuesday, but I couldn’t pick it up just yet. So he’ll call me again in 7-10 days when the next group of Syrah is ripe.

Sunday morning we drove out to Martin Ranch and met Dan and Therese Martin. We wanted to check on where we’ll be dropping off bins, and introduce ourselves. The entire family was busy cleaning bins for 10 tons of Merlot that were coming in. So Stefania and I went out and took our own reading in the vineyard. The upper section Cabernet was at 23.1, the lower section at 22.9. It looked like 2-3 weeks still.

Then we drove over to Uvas Creek. Ted had given my readings earlier in the week, so I wanted to taste the grapes and check on ripeness. These grapes are further along and it looks like maybe 10-14 days.

So starting about October 5th and running through about the 20th, we’ll be very very busy bringing in grapes.

All the vineyards looked really good. The growers we work with are the same as us, they’ve removed any sunburned grapes from this summers heat wave, and have only healthy grapes left on the vines to harvest. Things look really good! Pictures to follow later this week.