Category: General

Stef took a few pictures and Mark forwarded on a few more. We’ll have those up later this week, but I did want to get up the wine list from Saturday. Mark took the count Sunday afternoon….

2005 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2006 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2006 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek
2006 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains
……2007 Stefania Haut Tubee
2007 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek x 2
2007 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountain x 2
2008 Stefania Haut Tubee
2008 Stefania Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch
2008 Stefania Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains x 2
2009 Stefania Chardonnay Chaine d’Or
2006 Sea Smoke Chardonnay Magnum
2005 Andrew Murray Syrah Oak Savanna Vineyard
2005 Lillian Winery Syrah
2006 Sine Qua Non Syrah Raven Series
2006 Rivers-Marie Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Rivers-Marie Cabernet Sauvignon
2007 Tobin James Lagrein Silver Reserve
2004 Vigna Vecchia Chianti Classico
2005 Duca di Saragnano Chianti Riserva
2007 Domaine de la Buissonne Côtes du Rhône Villages Beaumes-de-Venise
2007 Donna Laura Ali Toscana IGT
2007 Thompson Street Pinot Noir “Posse”
2006 Pure Love Wines Shiraz Layer Cake
2007 Tobin James Primitivo James Gang Reserve
2006 Stags’ Leap Winery Petite Sirah
2006 Kongsgaard Chardonnay
2006 Parallel Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
2007 Clos du Val Cabernet Sauvignon
N.V. Alvear Pedro Ximénez Montilla-Moriles Solera 1927
N.V. LaMarca Prosecco
2007 DuMOL Chardonnay Isobel
2006 Latium Morini Valpolicella Superiore Prognai
2006 Rusina Syrah Monte Rosso
2007 Zind-Humbrecht Riesling
2005 Laetitia Late Harvest Riesling – Arroyo Grande Valley – Block Z
2008 Lafond Pinot Noir Lafond Vineyard
2008 Tolosa Winery Viognier Edna Ranch
2009 Santa Marina Provincia di Pavia IGT White Table Pinot Grigio Magnum
2006 Sanford Pinot Noir
2007 Chappellet Napa Valley Chardonnay

I just couldn’t seem to pull out the camera today. I did take a couple of pictures inside the Capitol Building today. I’ve been to DC maybe 20 times now and this was my first trip inside.

We’ve been getting around on the Metro and have spent a lot of time in old town Alexandria.

Last night we had two really fantastic events. One friend set up a tasting for us at his law firm and it was the perfect setting for us to share our wines. I’d really recommend a visit to the Washington Harbor if you’re on tour. It was an amazing setting looking out on Roosevelt Island.

After that we met up with old friends at Dino’s. I’d also highly recommend this as a dinner night out. It’s a kind of place I think we just don’t have enough of and I hope we will see a trend towards more places like it. The food was rustic Italian. All very well prepared from fantastic ingredients and at an affordable price. Service was fantastic and there was a deep wine list.

I complain a lot at home that I can get better food, better service and better wine at home than most restaurants and the one’s that can out do us at home want $200. Everywhere needs more places like Dino’s.

Tonight we’re off to downtown DC for a ‘dress up’ dinner!

We arrived safely in D.C. Had a great tasting and then dinner last night. We’ll try and answer emails from both those events later this afternoon or tomorrow when we arrive in Trenton. We’re off to visit the Capitol at 11 AM this morning, then the National Art Galleries I think.

We’re slow on email right now, but both Stef and I will answer all of them soon.

Cheers!

Our Fall release letters are going out on and about the 15th this month. We have all the details worked out on allocations. It’s going to be tight I think. I’m pretty sure we will run out of wine pretty quickly. We broke the list up into 3 groups. The ‘A’ group is made up of people who have purchased before. For that group there are 4 different breakdowns on allocation amounts.

Everyone in the ‘A’ group did get at least a 3 pack allocation of all three wines. The people at the top tier were allocated 6 Syrah, 6 Haut Tubee and 12 Pinot Noir. There were just about 30 of those people. To tell you how tight we are, there are just 32 cases of Syrah left right now. What I’m figuring is that not everyone will take their full amount.

The ‘B’ group is made up of people who have signed up for our list since the last release. There are just over 130 of those people. They are going to get the option to purchase a combo 3 pack made up of one of each wine. There’s also a slot for them to request additional wine if any makes it through the ‘A’ group.

The ‘C’ group is made up of people who signed up before last spring but have not purchased wine. That group is going to be given the chance to purchase the three 2007 wines we still have available (Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet, Uvas Creek Cabernet and Eagplepoint Syrah). There won’t be enough 2008 to offer them any of that.

It’s a little unusual to put newer sign ups in front of older sign ups but I thought it was important to give people a chance to try our wines and the 3 pack cost will be just $98. They will also have the option to purchase the 2007 wines we still have.

Over the next few days I’m going to be putting up notes on the three new wines. I tried to keep the letters brief so their are just basic tasting notes. I asked people to check the blog for more details on the wine so they will be up here shortly.

I took this picture last night before dinner at a friends. I just thought it was funny. Stefania and our friend Holly hamming it up for the camera over a pitcher of……..

So email me your best guess of what’s in the pitcher. First correct answer gets a bottle of Holly’s favorite wine – our 2008 Haut Tubee. And no Holly, you can’t guess.

I know we still have one more day to go but we’ve already had a great Labor Day Weekend. For many winemakers around the state it’s the start of their harvest, but we still have many weeks ahead before we start. It’s a great weekend to spend with friends.

Saturday we had a long 3+ hour lunch at a Brazilian steak house in San Mateo. We had two 750 ml bottles and a magnum with lunch. Everyone started in the bar though with a cocktail. There was a strict limit of one Pisco Sour per person. Two creates dementia 🙂

We were celebrating a baby shower for our friends and with this group BBQ meat and wine is the best type of baby shower. Below beef ribs come out to the table. After lunch many of us went into a ‘meat coma’. The talk the next day was if anyone actually ate again the rest of the day ( 1 1/2 out of 11 of us did!)

Sunday it was time to regather and get the smoker going. I smoked a salmon for Stefania and then when the smoker had cooled to about 180 I put these ribs on. Our friend Gerard had done steaks like that for us on our trip to Nashville. I left the steaks on for just about 70 minutes. They don’t really cook at all, they just pick up the spice of the smoke.

Then I transfer them to a hot grill and finish them off there.

I did fall asleep on the coach but we had another great night of food and wine with friends.

One more event tonight with smoked ribs, brats and more wine!

I’m not so much concerned with what happens in the vineyard or in the winery in this blog. What I mean is what does it mean when you here someone say a vintage is great? What does it mean when the wine critics call a vintage great?

On almost every front the 2007 vintage in California has been called a great vintage. I think that’s right, especially in the context of what people usually mean when they say that.

2007 was an easy year. That made it a great year. The weather, the seasons, everything you need to go right in a year went right. That meant it wasn’t particularly hard to bring in great grapes and because the grapes were so good it wasn’t hard to make good wine. The praise that often gets used is, “A rising tide raises all boats”.

That’s exactly what a great vintage does. Everyone succeeds and everyone makes wine above their normal level. It means the great sites and winemakers will make exceptional wine. It also means wines and sites that may usually be average will perform much better. For a consumer it means you can go out and buy just about anything from that year and it will be good.

Those type of years are really a boom for most wine drinkers because every choice they make will be a good one. For serious collectors it can actually be a bit of a draw back. That rising tide also means rising demand and that can mean rising prices. That happens in Bordeaux every time they have a good vintage and often people who would like to buy the wine get priced out of the market.

2008 was a totally different year. It was hard from start to finish. There were issues with almost everything you could image (except mildew) and extra work was required all year long in the vineyard and then again in the winery. On top of that yields were painfully low, often off up to 75% from 2007 at some sites.

So that makes it a bad vintage right?

I actually think 2008 is a better vintage than 2007. But there’s a huge qualifier on that. It’s not a vintage where all boats rose equally. It was the exact opposite in fact. Those growers and wineries that did the extra work, took the extra care and had the extra focus made fantastic wines. I’ve heard from many, many winemakers that they think the 2008 wines are the best or some of the best wines they have ever made.

If a winery couldn’t, wouldn’t or didn’t understand how to deal with the year, they struggled to make decent wines. A lot of people picked way too early and made lean tannic wines. Some didn’t modify their winemaking enough to deal with the small berries and high solid to liquid ratios at crush and made hard over extracted wines. Many struggled with the low yields and had difficulty handling the smaller lots from individual vineyards. You’ll see a lot of wine in 2008 that is going to be AVA labeled instead of vineyard labeled because producers didn’t have a plan to deal with the very small quantities they were forced to deal with and had to blend together lots.

Because of those yield issues there was very little quality juice available on the secondary market. Don’t expect to see great second label wines in 2008 or great wines from those wineries that buy in juice rather than process grapes. It’s going to be a bad year for the bulk blenders as well. 2008 will not be a year you can go to the supermarket and pick out any bottle.

That’s why 2008 is never going to be called ‘great’ by the press or critics. It wasn’t great for everyone. I think all the vintage charts you will ever see will rank it below 2007 and 2009. For the fine producers though that’s just not true. I think every wine we made in 2008 was better than the same wine we made in 2007. If you think I’m just hyping the vintage I have to sell, I’ll tell you I have almost as much 2007 left as I have 2008 still to sell. I also have much more 2009 in barrel still but I think 2008 is better than 2009.

I’ve heard that same thing from other quality producers I’ve talked to and in other wines I’ve tried. My advice is to skip the closeouts, bargains and blenders in 2008 and concentrate on those producers you know make great wine. Their wine is going to be very special.

Next week Stefania and I will hit the road to preview our 2008 wines for friends and customers on the East Coast. We have four events planned starting Thursday the 9th and wrapping up on Monday the 13th.

Thursday the 9th from 5-7 PM we will be pouring 6 different wines at a private location in Georgetown, DC. I’m planning on opening our 2007 Santa Cruz Mountains and Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons, 2007 Eaglepoint Ranch Syrah, 2008 Pinot Noir, 2008 Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch and 2008 Haut Tubee.

Thursday at 8PM we will be attending an off line wine dinner with members from the Wine Spectator on-line forum just north of DC at Dino’s. The restaurant is located right on the Red Line of the DC Metro.

Saturday evening the 11th we will be at a private party in New Jersey about 30 minutes from Philadelphia. We will be bringing along a selection of 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 wines.

Monday the 13th we will be at another off line dinner of Wine Spectator forum members in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street. We’ll be bringing our 2008 wines to that event for people to try.

If you would like to attend any one of these events please contact me directly via email for directions and a formal invite. We’re hoping to get to meet as many of our mailing list members as we can on this trip. Each event is very informal and we hope we’ll get the chance to talk with everyone interested in our wines.

Back in July I wrote about updating our business plan. Well I did finish the update and we have just a few financial reports to add once they’ve been checked off by our CPA. It looks like it will close out at just about 60 pages.

One thing we knew we needed to do was sit down together with all the shareholders (that’s me and Stefania) and review the plan. We wanted to make sure we were in agreement on everything in the plan and that most important we both understood where we’re going and what we’re going to do in the years ahead.

I suppose we could have just set aside some time on a Sunday afternoon and sat down in the backyard. Everyone knows though how easy it is to get distracted with chores and tasks around the house so we planned on a get away. We couldn’t go too far and really just had a couple days to spare so we spent Sunday and Monday in Monterey.

I’ve always really enjoyed Monterey and it was nice to spend a couple great days there. The weather was cool but sunny. We did spend Sunday afternoon on the balcony of our hotel room going over the business plan page by page. We even managed to do that without a glass of wine or a cocktail. At least until after we were done.

There was enough time left though to take a few long walks. We also ate on the wharf a couple of times and had a great time at the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

We don’t really treat ourselves to very many perks as business owners. In the past 5 years the fanciest thing I think we’ve bought as a business expense is a new computer for me. My old one was a circa 1999 Mac, so it was clearly time for a new one. We decided this retreat was a good idea though and we’re likely to make the business plan review an annual get away event.

What a sucky Summer. I shouldn’t complain about the weather, but I am. It’s 8:30 on Friday night, August 27th and it feels like mid Fall. The cold breeze from the fog rolling makes it too cold to be hanging out in shorts on the back patio. Feels like it’s 65 degrees, or cooler right now, and I’m bundled up on the couch watching the Giants game.

The problem with the cooler than normal temps goes beyond my crankies. It’s affecting the vines and the grapes. And that makes me even crankier.

The vines at home are doing “ok”, but we have leaves starting to turn already…on my way home from the winery today, a young vineyard down the hill from us already has yellowing leaves in the fruit zone. It’s too soon!

Three days before bottling, Paul and I were at Chaine d’Or, it was 1:01pm, 68 degrees outside, and the fog was lingering over the hills on the next ridge over from the vineyard. Argh! It’s been wet, damp, cool, foggy, and bleak.

Yesterday, an old Italian neighbor dude knocked on my door asking if Paul was home. In his grocery store bag he pulled out a cluster of white grapes from his backyard that had grey rot on it. I sighed. He said he’s never had his grapes look this bad in all the years he’s been tending them.

The best I could tell him was to cut out the damaged sections and we’d come by this weekend to take a look (and bring our Stylet Oil though I think it’s too late for another spray application).

The Church vineyard around the corner is doing pretty ok. I need to drop about 6 clusters of mildew damaged fruit, but it looks like we’ll have ~200 pounds of grapes to add to the Haut Tubee blend.