Category: General

Friday morning we picked up 1 ton of Pinot Noir from an old vine vineyard in the Southern Santa Cruz Mountains. This will be the first Pinot Noir we make.

The grapes were small and the flavors very intense. It was very cool Friday morning. Temps were in the high 40’s and the grapes came off the vine cool, which is perfect for transport and winemaking. Millie was able to load both bins in the back of her pick up truck so we didn’t have to rent a big flat bed like normal.

We were a little late leaving the vineyard, but by 10:00 am we were on the road and headed towards Chaine d’ Or, about a 45 minute drive. We arrived just before 11:30.

I was a little worried about how things would go. This was the first time anyone had brought grapes into the winery, everything else made there had always been estate grapes. That meant we had some new processes to set up, new equipment to use, and a new layout of all the equipment. With so much being done for the first time I was counting on some problems.

We got very lucky! Everything went better than planned and we quickly worked out a couple of small details and had a system down. 85% of the grapes went through the de–stemmer and 15% went into a t-bin in whole clusters. We just filled up one bin, or about enough to make 50 cases of wine.

The Brix tested at 25.2 in the bin, right in the range I like and I covered the grapes and let them start their cold soak. With temperatures so low, we won’t need to do anything artificial to lower the temperature. The grapes should just soak for 2-3 days before natural fermentation starts. My plan is to be pretty gentle in push downs as the juice already seems pretty intense.

We’ll have another 1-2 tons coming in from a second vineyard soon and eventually we’ll combine the two into a “Santa Cruz Mountains” Pinot Noir.

I finally got a little break yesterday afternoon to start processing payments. The weather looks pretty good next week and we’ll start sending out shipments to those areas that also have good weather.

Right now we stand at about 60% of the wine ‘booked’, that is orders in, entered and waiting for billing. There are commitments for about 25% more. I’ll make a call one way or another tonight to send out order forms to the last group of people to sign up after the initial release.

By the end of next week we should be sold out and by the following week we’ll have shipments going out to everyone but people in the hottest areas. If you’ve been holding on to your order form, please try and get it to me soon. Last release I kept back some wine for people who I knew would be stragglers and was able to fill a few orders into June. This time around I don’t think I’ll have anything left.

There are lots of unglamourous things to do in growing and making wine. We often joke as we work about feeling ‘romantic’ or glamorous‘, as we clean things or lift things. The past two days have given some good examples of the un-fun side of winemaking.

Saturday after picking and crushing the home vineyard grapes we stopped by the Elandrich vineyard to take sugar readings. A 2 foot rattle snake greeted us on the walk way up to the Zinfandel section. The little snakes are the worst. Their rattles don’t rattle yet, they are too soft to make noise, and they bite everything, since they haven’t learned yet not to waste their poison.

With a rake and a pair of hedge trimmers we were able to eliminate the little dude. The head keeps on biting well after being removed from the rest of the critter, so you’ve got to bury it. That task done, we went on to test the Zinfandel. 23.4 BRIX, almost ready, another week or so.

Yesterday was spent at Chaine d’Or picking Chardonnay and Merlot. As soon as the picking starts, the bees and wasps show up. Hundreds of them if not thousands. They hover around the crushpad where there is lots of good grape gunk to feast on.

I got my first two stings of the season. Luckily I’m not allergic to bees, but one of the pickers had a pretty bad reaction on his hand. That’s a little secret of picking. You can’t sneak up on the clusters, you have to give the plant a good shake before you reach in to start cutting. That lets the bees know you are there and they move on to another plant.

At the end of the day I was crushing about 600 pounds of Merlot. My shirt and pants were covered with grape gunk from the crusher. The little bits of grape are too much for the bees to resist and they crawl all over you. It’s not unusual to have 10-15 bees on you and many more hovering around. You’ve got to just let them be bees. If you leave them alone they’ll happily harvest the sugar and be on their way.

So add two more skills to the winemaking playbook. Snake wrangler and bee herder.

Woke up at 6:15 this morning. A very cold morning, in the low 50’s. It rained last night for about 45 seconds, but by this morning there was no sign of it, the sky was clear. We tried to have a normal morning, a little coffee in bed, and read the newspaper.

At 7:30 we started the first pick of the season. The ‘Home Ranch’, “Haut Tubee“. The Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre and two Zinfandel plants around our home. It took about 30 minutes to get the bird netting off. Always a dirty disgusting job. Then about 10 minutes to pick the 150 pounds of grapes we got this year.

Next we’re off to Kathy and Millie’s to pick the grapes around their house. About 9:30 we should be on our way up to Chaine d’Or to get the 300 pounds or so of grapes into a bin to start turning it into wine. In all about 1/3 of a barrel, or 10 cases or so. We’ll combine these grapes with the other small lots and probably end up with about 40 cases of wine from the small lots.

There won’t be much processing. It’s really not worth hooking up the crusher and pump. We’ll dump the grapes in whole cluster and then some lucky person will jump in and smash them up some. Then I’ll leave it to start on its way to fermentation. If all goes well we should be done and cleaned up by 1pm.

Orders are still coming in from our first round of mailers last week. Demand is just about where I thought it would be so we dropped of the second round of mailers on schedule today.

This round includes offers for three packs with an option to ask for a six pack. Right now it looks like we should be able to fill requests for a six pack if ordering stays on track. I’m guessing that by this time next week we should be down to 3-4 cases left. I’ll start to process payments shortly and we should begin shipping to states that have good weather in the second week of October.

We’ve had about a dozen recent sign ups, and I hope to get those people out a three pack offer next week if ordering stays on track. IT will be tight, but I’m still hoping I can get wine out to everyone who wants it. Maybe not as much as they want, but I should have wine for everyone.

A few years ago when we started the vineyard management company we averaged 8-10 calls a year about managing or installing vineyards. We’d consult on 1-2 and usually take on one small project every year. That was the most I could handle and that was usually the scope of the projects. A few acres or even a backyard and some advice on growing grapes and making wine.

Each year it grew a little more, and we remained pretty selective on the projects we’d take on. The important thing was to make sure that the projects helped us out in making wine and growing the winery side of the business. Along the way we started to get a reputation among the local winemakers as top quality growers and dedicated farmers.

This past summer I’d say the vineyard business ‘tipped over’. It’s grown to the point now that it is its own thriving enterprise. Sycamore Creek, Big Basin Vineyards, Windy Oaks and several other wineries have started to recommend us to people thinking of putting in vineyards. We’ve also started to get calls from landscape architects and even one of the largest commercial construction companies in the area.

So now, even though we’re months away from 2008 I’m trying to figure out what projects we’ll take on in 2008. There are already people trying to sign us up for next year. There are two large projects pending. One would involve a no-corners cut top of the line 4+ acre vineyard installation project. An amazing south facing hill side ready for us to plant, and grow grapes and make wine. The owners want the very best, top of the line, and they’ve asked us to do it for them!

We’re also mulling over another amazing project. 12 acres of some of the finest old vine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A 30 year old vineyard that supplied grapes for some of the most legandary wines ever made in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We’ve been asked to take over management of the vineyard, and most importantly, make the wine from the amazing site.

Now comes the tough part. What project can we take on? Can we do both? And what about all the other calls we’ll get in the Spring? I never thought the little vineyard company, “Two Gringos” would grow so large, and take on such huge projects. Hard work, dedication, and commitment to the highest quality, I can’t think of any other secrets, but those three things worked!

I’ve been keeping up on postings on line about harvest around the state. One thing seems to be happening already that I’m calling harvest spin.

A few posts ago I wrote about being surprised about early harvesting going on. I was even more surprised to see pictures of these harvests. The grapes just did not look ripe. Green stems and green seeds in the bins. A few old growers joked about ‘panic’, and those harvesting shot back with some pretty harsh words about people who ‘pick by the numbers’.

Now this week I’ve seen a few of those early pickers start talking about what a great job they did. How now the weather looks cooler, and there is rain on the way (40% chance of 1/4 inch of rain this week) and the harvest is ruined for everyone else. I’ll tell you what I think that is….pure spin.

I think those earlier harvesters got nervous with the little heat wave and worried it would not end. They picked when their grapes got in the sugar ranges they wanted because they worried the sugars would climb too high. I also think those grapes were not ripe yet. Now they are trying to make a bad choice, seem like a good one, even if only to themselves.

The weather has turned cool, but it’s in the normal range. There is light rain in the forecast, but just a little, and the vineyards will dry out fine afterwards. Now the patient people are talking about a harvest a week or so earlier than 2005 or 2006, with ripe grapes and lower alcohol wine. That sounds like a great combo to me.

We dropped the first round of offer letters for our fall release in the mail this morning. Our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon Uvas Creek Vineyard is officially released.

I had to cut down the number of people being offered 6 packs this time around to about 90. This first round of mailers went to those allocated a 6 pack. The remaining 170 or so letters have already been completed and we will drop those in the mail next Monday. Those letters will go to everyone allocated a 3 pack.

We expect to start shipping right around October 1st. We are also offering people the opportunity to pick up their wine in person for this release at Chaine d’Or. We’ll have the winery open on November 17th as ‘Pick Up Day”.

The fax machine should start to go off tomorrow night and be going full force on Wednesday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll be able to get wine to everyone who wants it this time around.

It’s been another busy weekend. My phone actually rings more on the weekends now than during the week. There was a little break Saturday. I had planned on harvesting Syrah and Grenache from the home vineyard, but it’s just not where I want it yet, so I was able to sleep in on Saturday for a few hours.

At 11:30 though we had an appointment to visit a new vineyard site. It’s about 4 acres in Los Altos Hills that would be planted next year. The site is on a very nice hill with southern exposure. We met with the general contractor and will decide this week if we take the project or not.

Then it was up to the winery. We had a little clean up work to do after the move in and I wanted to get all the barrels marked off and topped up. We had visitors who wanted to ask questions about getting started in the wine business. We had a fun time, and finished up our work after they had gone, getting home by 6pm.

Today Millie and I headed off to the Harrison vineyard to replant three plants and tie up the new little plants. They seem to be doing very well and a few have even reached the cordon wire. Next we drove to the Elandrich vineyard to check on the grapes.

They look amazing. This really looks like it’s going to be a great year. The clusters are small, tight, and clean. The colors look great and the flavors are intense already. The Zinfandel tested at 23.1 BRIX and the Merlot at 22.0. It looks like 3 week until we’ll harvest the Zin and 4 weeks for the Merlot. That’s on track with what we saw at Chaine d’Or on Saturday. I didn’t take BRIX levels, but the Cabernet tasted and looked like it was 4-5 weeks away.

That break will be good, because we’re spending the afternoon stuffing envelopes with our fall release letters. We’re also going to go check out the Almaden Art and Wine festival. I’m not a big fan of Art and Wine festivals, but this one is the closest to our home, and since we’re are the only winery in the area, we’re going to see if we want to set up next year. The last task for the day will be visiting the annual Friends of the Winemakers meeting at 4PM. Hopefully a good nights sleep and then off to the ‘full time’ job on Monday!

And it wasn’t harvesting………

Tuesday night we received all our 2006 wines in barrel. They had come from the facility we had them stored at to Chaine d’Or. We decided to move them to make bottling easier in the spring and fall. This way we’ll have everything together when it’s time to bottle and be able to make bottling decisions based on what’s best for the wine and our schedule.

As with most things related to wine making, it was mostly about logistics. Unfortunately the logistics got off to a very rough start. Some how my written instructions to “Call me after Tuesday to set up a delivery time”, got translated too “Put the wine on a truck on Tuesday.”

So after getting a phone call at 10AM we were able to set up a 4:30 drop off time. That gave us just enough time to rush to the winery and start moving empty barrels around to make room for the full barrels arriving. We finished at 5:10 PM. And then waited and waited and waited and finally at 8:50 PM the truck showed up.

More logistical problems to deal with. Some of the racks were not the right type for our forklift, and other were stacked in a pyramid, which will not work in the winery. So we scrambled and worked and lifted and improvised and racked wine into new barrels and sent Millie out on a dinner run and finally sometime after midnight got everything put in the winery and in its place.

We did manage to take samples from each barrel though and I’ll have tasting notes on the wines up shortly and the wines are safe and resting in our new home.