Category: General

I was really surprised to read today that many people are already starting harvest. And not just in hot areas, or for early grapes like Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. There are actually vineyards in Napa harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon, which should normally be about the last grape to come in.

This seems way too early to me. I’m still several weeks away from having anything ready to pick, and it will likely be the end of September early October before we pick most of our vineyards. Chaine d’Or should be the last, probably around the 15th of October. Early than 2005 or 2006, but still ‘normal’.

I wondered as I read the reports if people aren’t in a bit of a panic. We’ve had a string of hot days and sugars have started to climb. The grapes taste good, but I think are still a few weeks away. It reminds me a little of 2003, when we had a heat wave in mid September and a lot of people picked early. Many people I talked with were sorry they did that.

This time of year is the great test of nerves for winemakers and growers. You worry and worry about the grapes getting too ripe, or having late season problems and loosing everything. But you have to be patient, you’ve got to wait for the right time. It’s hard on the guts and the heart, but you’ve got to do it.

Dear Friends,

So much has happened since the last time we wrote to all of you it’s hard to know where to start! It’s been a busy few months and a fantastic summer for growing grapes. We’re excited with everything that’s happened so far this year and excited for the upcoming harvest.
If you have signed up to receive an order form we will be mailing them starting the week of September 10th. We are going to do two waves this year. Those higher on the ‘points’ list will get their letters first, and the second wave will follow the week of the 17th. This spring there was a flurry of sign ups right after letters went out, so if that happens again, and we have wine left, there will be a final chance offering on September 24th.

We sold out in just about 5 weeks last time, and we think it may be as fast as two weeks this time based on the growth of our mailing list. We are so grateful for the support you’ve given us!

We expect to start shipping during the last week of October as the weather cools and the harvest activity slows down. Just like before, the order form will contain details on allocations, shipping and ordering. Shipping in particular has some big changes, as we’ve tried to make it even easier (and lower priced).

Summer News

And what news we have! First, our vineyard management business is booming! We have added a new vineyard in Morgan Hill that will start producing Cabernet Sauvignon in 2009 and a Syrah vineyard in Los Altos Hills that will start producing in 2010. We have several other projects lined up for 2008 and beyond.

All this new work has allowed us to add our first real employee. Our good friend Millie Ottinger is joining us for 20 hours a week starting this fall. Millie is a journeyman carpenter and electrician and loves working in the vineyard. She’ll take on the role of Vineyard Construction Foreman and Assistant Vineyard Manager. Her email will be [email protected]. Millie’s been helping us out for a few years now in the vineyard and knows exactly how we like to farm our vineyards.

We got the chance to get out and meet many of you this summer on our “Summer Tour 2007.” We stopped in Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago. We had such a great time at each event and really loved being able to preview our new wines. We’re already looking forward to “Summer Tour 2008”! Well, maybe “Spring Tour” when it’s a little cooler. We are also going to try and get to Dallas this fall or winter since so many of you live in the Dallas area.

Of course the REALLY BIG NEWS we already shared with you is that we’re now running Chaine d’Or. Paul started working with Jerry and Anne Anderson a few harvests ago as “Crushman”. They’ve helped us along and taught us so much over the years. This summer Anne and Jerry decided to retire and asked us to take over the vineyard and winery. We are so excited and grateful we can’t even begin to tell you. The winery is absolutely state of the art and first class. We’ll be releasing the wines we helped on and Jerry and Anne finished, under the “Chaine d’Or” label. Starting with the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon we’ll be releasing the wines as Stefania Wine, Chaine d’Or Vineyard.

The winery is located about 25 minutes north of San Jose, and about 20 minutes south of the San Francisco Airport. I know many of you fly into SFO on visits, and now there’s no excuse to not stop by for a tour and some tasting. Just let us know in advance and we’ll set up a visit for you!

Fall Release

This Fall we’ll be releasing our 2005 Uvas Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. The vineyard is located on the gravelly banks of Uvas Creek in the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. It lays just outside the approved AVA for Santa Cruz Mountains wines, in the Santa Clara Valley AVA. We’re very happy with how this wine has turned out and feedback has been great!

Like our 2005 Syrah this wine is round and well balanced, with really great notes of currant, black cherry, spices, vanilla and cigars. It will need about 20 minutes in the decanter if you open it now. I’m going to tell people to open it now or over the next 5-7 years. We have heard from some of you though that you think the wine has the backbone for much longer aging.

We are also scrambling to offer the 2006 Chaine d’Or Chardonnay in time for the fall. The wine is ready for release, but we don’t know if we’ll have all the shipping permits in place in the next few weeks. We may be able to offer it only to those of you in California this fall. We will have it in our Spring Release though for sure.

Harvest Update

Right now we’re in a mini heat wave, with temperatures in the 90’s and great sunshine. It looks like harvest will be a few weeks earlier than 2005 or 2006, both of which were ‘late’ years. It looks like 2007 will be a ‘normal year’. We expect to start picking grapes at home in mid-September. The commercial picks will probably start the first week of October.

We have a lot of grapes coming in this year. We’re planning on at least 12 tons, or 6 times more than just two years ago. We should end up making 750 cases. We will be returning to Eaglepoint Ranch for Syrah, and Uvas Creek for Cabernet Sauvignon. We will also be back to Martin Ranch/Harvest Moon for Cabernet Sauvignon and a new addition for 2007, Cabernet Franc. Stefania has wanted to make a Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Franc since we started, and this year we will have the space to try it. We will also be harvesting the Cabernet Sauvignon at Chaine d’Or and Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel from our own vineyards. Finally, Jim Schultze at Windy Oaks, has agreed to sell us some of his fantastic Pinot Noir in 2007. We have been after this Pinot Noir since we started making wine and are excited to get some this year.

Our plan is to make 5 different wines in 2007 plus our Haut Tubee. There will be vineyard designate wines from Eaglepoint Ranch, Uvas Creek and Chaine d’Or. We will also have Santa Cruz Mountains designate Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Plans for 2008

Settling in to Chaine d’Or and getting used to running the winery is our top goal in 2008. We plan on producing about 1200 cases next year. We will have a couple of new vineyard sources next year as we take on some new vineyard projects and older projects start producing fruit. We’re going to try and balance all this into making 7-8 different wines going forward, and getting case production to about 3000 total. We’d like to keep our releases to 3-4 wines twice per year.

Upcoming Events

If you would like to come to our annual Harvest Party please send us a note. It looks like it will be Saturday October 13th in our backyard. We’ll have our usual grape stomp and pumpkin patch at the party plus lots of great food and wine.

November 10th we’ll be hosting a Friends of the Winemakers (FOW) dinner. FOW is a local group dedicated to preserving the history of winemaking in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley. Tickets will be $45 and include four courses paired with our wines. Space is very limited. Please contact us if you would like ticket information.

November 17th we will participate in Passport Days in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We’ll be open to the public at Chaine d’Or. Paul will be providing barrel tasting for members of the Stefania Wine mailing list. If you stop by please let us know you are on the list for samples of our 2006 wines from barrel and a tour of the winery. Chaine d’Or is open only on Passport Days and Vintner’s Festival days, usually four days per year. We will be open by appointment, exclusively to members of our mailing list. If you would like to plan a visit please call us at 408-242-8598 or email Paul at [email protected].

Cheers and thank you all for your continued support!

Stefania and Paul

We’re off on our summer tour and it’s very likely the next few blogs will just have a tiny bit more to do with travel than wine.

Friday we flew out on Southwest from San Jose to Baltimore. Now I actually like Southwest. I know some people hate it, but to me it’s an airline that doesn’t pretend it’s going to treat you nice, it’s honest about the service it offers. A bag of peanuts and a seat that’s what you get.

The other airlines pretend like they are going to give you more, but in the end, you get a bag of peanuts and a seat. Plus the latest I’ve ever been on Southwest is 35 minutes. On Northwest I’ve only had delays of less than four hours about 25% of the time. SO they get me there, it’s on time, and they are honest. Good enough for me.

On this last trip though, wedged in the tiny seat, I started to think of all the transportation I’ve ever taken and where an airplane ranks. I’ve never been on a camel, or an elephant, but I have been on a horse and a stagecoach. So a plane is definitely less comfortable than a bus or a train. Then I tried to rank it????

It came in at the stagecoach level. Well kind of. Riding on top of a stage coach is not bad, you can see the bumps coming. Inside a stagecoach though is hot, stuffy, small and bumpy. So that’s it. A plane is definitely better than taking a stagecoach. At leas if you have to ride inside the stagecoach.

Last night we went out to dinner at Sent Sovi in Saratoga. The idea was to try all our wines with some good food before we go out visiting people next week. A ‘Beta Test’. I wanted to know how everything was doing before I opened it for other people.

The dinner at Sent Sovi was actually very good and service was wonderful. There was a wild mushroom course in particular that was very good.

We opened four wines. I checked in on the 2005 Syrah since it had been over a month since we’d had it. Doing fine and hitting a good spot now. I also opened the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. It needs 30 minutes in a decanter right now. Not yet ready for release, but I think we knew it would be like that. We’re not planning on sending out for a few months still. With the decanter time it showed really well and I think everyone will really enjoy this wine next week as we open it for the first time for people.

We also opened two mystery wines to try out. More news on those two wines coming soon, but we were pretty excited by how they tasted.

The staff at Sent Sovi tasted along with us and were very impressed. They asked us to come back and taste through with the owner and see about scheduling a winemakers dinner for us there sometime soon.

We ended up taking almost 4 hours to work through the wines and the courses and our small test group had a great time. I’m feeling really good about showing the wines next week.

Today I got my first two mailers of the ‘Fall’. On July 30th. Fall comes earlier than the Christmas season now, at least if your selling wine.

I understand the desire to get them out early. Beat the rush of other mailers that pile up for people is a big consideration I’m sure. The main thing though I think is to get orders and shipping done and taken care of for small operations. The mailers I got were from Loring Wine Company and Copain.

Both are bigger than us of course, but I know both are all hands on deck during the September and October harvest season. With everyone working in the winery crushing grapes and making wine, there will be no one left to answer emails, fix shipping issues, or process credit cards.

Stefania and I will be the same way. During October we won’t have much time to tend to the business side of the business, it will be all about making wine. Our Fall Mailer will go out early too. Probably just another few weeks or right around Labor Day. We won’t start shipping until after we’ve wrapped up harvesting, that way we’ll have time to deal with any shipping issues, but the gap between taking orders and shipping is a gap we need to get other things done.

We’re not pushing it into July, but I can sure understand why Brian Loring and Wells Guthrie want to.

Stef and I stopped in last night at Unwined just off Almaden Expwy in South San Jose. http://www.unwinedshop.com/ It’s a great little wine bar / shop about 4 miles from our home. They always have interesting flights of wine, nice small tapas style plates of food, and 2-3 tv’s to watch sports (or Oprah) on.

We had the “Mendocino White’s” flight and the “Unusual Red’s” flight and a plate of cheese and salami. All very nice.

Unwined still has 4-5 bottles left of our 2005 Syrah Eaglepoint Ranch. We left them with some after our release party, so that I didn’t have to carry an open case back to the storage facility. This is the very last available 2005 Syrah, everything else is gone or on restaurant wine lists. Unwined is selling it at release price of $35, so if you’d like to pick up one more bottle, give them a call at 408-323-WINE.

Los Altos Vineyard Update.

Millie, Stef and I completed construction on the Los Altos vineyard project Sunday morning. It’s a small project. Eleven rows, about 175 plants on a 1/4 acre, but when combined with the Elandrich vineyard should make enough fruit for 3-4 barrels of wine in 4-5 years.

We’re putting in Syrah on a 5 wire trellis system with 6 x 8 spacing. The plants will go in on Friday and Saturday and we’ll finish up a few remaining tasks then. The site is about 500 feet from the old Page Mill Winery site and should be a great spot to grow Syrah.

The project was a little rough starting out. We wanted to start in early May, but the homeowner wasn’t ready for us. That put a serious kink in the schedule. We have a little gap in Mid May through Mid June when flowering is going on to do construction on new vineyards. As soon as flowering completes though we have to stop whatever is going on and go ‘green prune’ and tie up the existing vineyards.

So right after getting in the end posts on this project we had to stop for three weeks as we took care of the other vineyards. Last week we were able to get back out and finish up. Stef should have photos soon.

Today we’ll be hosting our 5th annual “Burgers and Bordeaux”.

It was an idea 5 years ago to de-mystify wine in general and French wine in particular. Bordeaux was the perfect subject. Many new wine drinkers are afraid to try French wines, or find wine naming in general confusing. We work off a simple theme: We taste wines of each of the five grapes used in Bordeaux; Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petite Verdot and Malbec. Then we taste blends of those grapes from around the world, including many Bordeaux’s.

It gives every one a chance to taste each part of the blend on it’s own and see what it brings, and how the sum of parts can be greater than the individual grapes. Many people are afraid to get away from varieties they know, and this is a chance to explore blends. It also is an easy environment to learn in and take some of the fluff away from wine.

The “Burgers” portion of the BBQ plays an important part in that. I hate that people obsess over the “perfect pairing”. There is no such thing. Time, place, mood, preperation and a hundred other factors make the interplay of wine and food unique each time you do it. Forget about “perfect”, go for “fun”. What’s more fun than burgers on the Forth of July? The burgers also let people know, it’s ok to have wine, even great wine, with any food you’d like.

So we’ll relax on this 4th of July with a casual BBQ, good friends, and good wine. No fluff, no pretense, no anxiety. Just the way we like wine.

Last week Stef and I were guests at a lovely dinner hosted by a local professional organization. They asked us to pair wines with a three course dinner, including our Syrah, and speak about each pairing.

It was a real fun night and the group was very enthusiastic. They had great questions and treated us like celebrities. We chatted away for several hours after the event was supposed to wrap up. It was the type of nice event we’re starting to get more often now where people are so excited to meet the winemaker. I had a blast.

Sunday I was out in the hot sun. Me and Millie and a crew of two helpers. We were digging post holes and setting the end posts for the new vineyard in Los Altos Hills. At one point one of the holes was not aligned right and I picked up a shovel and expanded it out, digging down 3 feet in the rough mix of hard clay and rocks.

This is in a little suburban area, so there was lots of foot traffic (and horse traffic) going by as we worked. A couple people stopped, one to ask directions and one to ask if it was a vineyard we were putting in. As I held the shovel, I thought of the Thursday night event. What a totally different world. The glamour of the wine dinner vs. the business end of a shovel on a hot day. I think I’m lucky though, I enjoy doing both.

Here’s what I’ve seen so far. Although I’ve followed the situation in other areas I’ve only talked in detail with growers in my area, and Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch in Mendocino. Keep that in mind as the situation can be very different in different parts of the state.
So far 2007 has been the easiest year I’ve seen since I’ve started in 2001. There actually have been comparisons to 1997, which was also viewed as easy.
So what does easy mean?
It means that there has been a leisurely pace to vineyard work and no unusual actions needed in the vineyard. At this stage in the growing season you’re looking at four main themes:
1. disease pressure – mildew2. potential yields3. green growth or vigor4. water stress and situation for the remainder of the growing season.
1. disease pressure. Mildew pressure has been the lowest I’ve ever seen. Many have cut back their spraying drastically. Casey didn’t do his first spraying until May. Only Bradley Brown at Big Basin Vineyards has told be he’s seen any pressure this year, and he zapped it early with oil.
Spraying has also been very easy. 2005 in particular and a lesser amount in 2006 were difficult years. The rain patterns often had us out 2-3 times a week. This year we’ve been able to stay on an every 2 weeks schedule. You have to spray after each rain if you use organics or time your spraying for dry periods with systemics. In 2005 and 2006 the weather drove us nuts. We’d spray, it would rain, then not give enough gap between rain to get another spray to set. To make matters worse there would be calm periods between storms, which lets Powdery Mildew thrive. It meant a lot of work, and some growers still had Powdery Mildew problems in both years, and black rot problems in 2006. It was a challenge and although the best growers brought in good healthy grapes, it was still a lot of work.
This year we’ve had rain, gone out and sprayed, the wind kicks up (which helps prevent Powdery Mildew) and then relaxed until the next spraying was needed.
The net result? Healthy flowering, fruit set and cluster size. Potential yields look good, and unless something dramatic happens in the summer, we’re not worried about mildews and rots.
2. Potential yields – At this point in the season yields look good. Some plants are throwing 3rd clusters, but not many. Flowering is still underway but set appears good and the plants healthy. Good growers will drop 3rd clusters which tend to not catch up, but every thing was very even this year. Plants flowered and set all together, which leads to even ripeness.
3. Green Growth – Vigor. This was the demon in 2005. The rain patterns lead to excessive growth. That encouraged Powdery Mildew, and meant many growers had to increase their farming labor 25-75%. There was a lot of work to do to bring in healthy grapes and balance vines.
This year the plants have been late, 1-2 weeks, but even and controlled in their growth. I’ve had to do no shoot thinning or lateral removal before flowering. In 2005 I had to make 2 complete passes through the vineyards.
I’ve also had very little need to remove excess buds or double shoots. The plants have just been balanced and not needed extra fussing. The lateness is not a concern to anyone I’ve talked with, or myself. We’re not pushing things severely like 1998 or 1999, it just looks like 1-2 weeks later than normal, or about the same as last year.
Although we have only seen one heat spike, our degree days seem fine, and the heat is really needed over the 90 days following flowering. The entire summer is ahead of us, and it is possible we’ll have lower alcohol, lower pH wines again in 2007, like 2005 and 2006, but that will play out in July and August. No one is concerned on not getting grapes ripe.
4. Water stress and situation for the remainder of the growing season.
It has been a drought year, with rainfall at 30-50% of normal in many locations. I’ve turned on my drip systems later than I have in the last few years. In 2005 I had them off all season. Still the amount has been small 1/2 gallon per week and precautionary.
Others are doing the same. No one seems particularly worried, just cautious in getting water in the ground. We’ve seen no drought stress at this time. If things get really hot this summer it could be a concern. Those on reservoir water are worried that they can make it through a hot summer with the water on hand, but thus far it’s not been an issue.
So overall? ‘Easy’. The year is off to a good start, and for consumers I think it looks particularly good. Both 2005 and 2006 were challenging years. The kind that took hard work in the vineyards and separates the good growers and winemakers from the average. Maybe a little like 2003 in Bordeaux, where some made great wines, and some struggled.
2007 is off to a start like 2000 Bordeaux, the kind of vintage that lifts everyone and makes the average good, and the good great. BUT, the real work and risk is ahead. There’s a long summer to get through, and the Fall is always key to quality.

(Also posted on Wine Spectator Forums)