Category: General

Last summer we got a call from a family south of San Jose in the small town of San Martin. They grow walnuts there, and a few years ago planted about 200 Syrah and Grenache vines. The vines were in trouble and they didn’t know what was wrong.

We went down to take a look and found that Powdery Mildew was the main problem. The vineyard was actually in pretty good shape. Most of the time we get a call like that we find a vineyard that has not been properly pruned, suckered and tied up. In those cases the damage to the vine is severe. Grapes are wild aggressive plants, and with improper care, they will grow like a weed. If the trunk and canes have not been kept in shape by suckering, pruning and tying up, it takes three years to restore them. The same amount of time to start over with new plants.

Their experience with the walnut orchard though had served them well. The pruning was good, the trunks suckered and strong, and the plants trained properly. They had just made a few small mistakes. They had watered too much and the vines had gotten to vigorous. It’s very common for people to think vines need more water than they really do.

That vigor had created an environment that let Powdery Mildew thrive and they were not sure what, how and when to spray. That’s the other common mistake people can make. It was too late to save the grape crop. Once mildew spreads to the grapes, they will never get ripe enough to make wine. They make look ripe, but the mildew prevents sugar development and stunts all flavor.

As we explained all this too them last year the entire family came out to take notes, ask questions and learn all they could. I really enjoyed our time with them. Their enthusiasm to learn was really fun.

This year they followed the watering and spraying schedule I left them with. Calling just once to track down a Powdery Mildew spray I recommended to stop the active spores left from last season.

A few weeks ago though they emailed worried about the vines. They looked ‘wild and out of control’, and they worried about mildew again. I made sure they didn’t do anything right away. Doing anything while the plants flower in late May will ruin the crop, so I assured them: “wait, and we’ll be out in a few weeks.”

This morning we headed down and spent a few hours with them again. The vines were doing well, still full of vigor so they had gotten very bushy. Stef and I showed them how to thin the shoots, and remove laterals, then tie the vines into the trellis. We worked half a row with them until they had it down, and left them working away. They were happy that the wild vines now looked like the well tended vineyards they had just seen in Paso Robles.

Going down and visiting with them is a trip Stef and I both enjoy. A friendly family, full of cheer and enthusiasm about growing grapes and making wine is a trip that is a lot of fun for us. We’ll go back in a month or so and check on them, and I’m sure their little vineyard will be doing great.

A tasting note? Yeah why not. We had this wine last night with some fresh Salmon and angle hair pasta. The wine had bright cherry flavors. Ripe cherry almost like a cherry soda, and the great silky feel of fine Pinot Noir. It added spicy notes on the finish.

I thought this was the best wine I’ve ever had from Brian Loring. It was unique to itself. Any attempt to say it tasted like some type of Burgundy would not be accurate. It tasted like a wine from California. But not in the way many are critical of California Pinot Noir, even calling the thick, sweet over-extracted style –Pinot–Zinoir.

This wine was all Pinot Noir, silky, fresh, fruity and spicy, but there was no mistaking it was from California. A great wine, reflecting the effort of Peter Cargasacchi the grower, and Brian Loring the winemaker.

And Brian has been a hero-role model for me for many years. I’ve followed many of the things he’s done. From customer service, to mailing list policies, vineyard sourcing, and probably most importantly, watching how Brian was able to run his wine company and keep his full time high tech job. Next year I think I’ll even be switching to his policy of including shipping prices in the price of his wine.

Many people in the wine industry have told me, it’s very hard to be both a great business man, and a great winemaker. Drinking Brian’s wine last night, was great inspiration and proof, that you can do both.

Grape vines, at least those used for wine, are self pollinating. They don’t need bees, or birds or any outside help to flower. The flower simply opens up and drops it’s pollen on to the seed below. The flowers are tiny, less than 1mm across. The pollinated flowers become the individual grapes in each cluster.

So the success of flowering is very big in determining how big your crop will be each year. The best thing you can do as a farmer to help is — Nothing. The flowers are so small that it’s very easy for the pollen to ‘miss’ and you end up with a grape pod that won’t turn into a grape. These are called ‘shot berries’. If you get a lot of shot berries this is called ‘shatter’. In that case you end up with a cluster with just a few grapes on it.

So when flowering starts, you want to stop doing anything to the plant. No trimming, no spraying, no shaking the plant in any way. You also hope the wind stays calm, as high wind will cause the pollen to miss, and leads to shatter. Rain or hail is the very worst, it will release the pollen and wash it away.

We’ve just started to see flowering. So far the weather has been very good, and I’ve stayed out of the vineyard. I’ll have to cut my work back now to things that won’t disturb the plants. When flowering is over, we call this ‘set’. That means the clusters have set their good berries and the grapes will mature through the summer. Once we have set, I’ll return to the vineyards.

We wrapped up our 10 days in Oregon and the California Coast on Sunday. Just in time to get to San Francisco on Monday for bottling of our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, Uvas Creek Vineyard.

The wine tasted the best of any of our samples. I think we found a real sweet spot to bottle at. My original plan was to bottle in September, but after the last few tastings I thought sooner was better than later. I didn’t want to risk drying it out at all, or loosing any fruit for more wood.

The wine was a little low on free Sulfur, so we added a bit at bottling to bring it up to about 30ppm. Still pretty low, most wine gets bottled with 50ppm or more.

The bottling line went mostly with out issue. We were short a couple bottles, but found another case to finish up. There were enough labeled corks this time, and only 1-2 minor snags that slowed us down. We ended up with 48 cases of 750’s and 1 case of magnums. They’ll be picked up on Friday and taken to storage until we’re ready to release the wine, probably in late September.

The addition of sulfur at bottling usually means it’s a good idea to let the bottles ‘settle’ a little longer before releasing them, so we’ll do that. I took home a few cases so I can check on the wine as we get close to release and make sure it’s ready to go.

We’re out on the road right now. Mostly vacation, our first week long one in a long time, but we’re also visiting a few Pinot Noir makers in Oregon.

We’re planning on making a little Pinot Noir this year, and next year we may have up to eight tons to make. So a little research was in order.

I’m picky about Pinot. I don’t like Pinot to be heavy or jammy. I like Pinot Noir’s that are silky and fragrant, with sexy noses that jump from the glass. I like the wine to finish long and clean with just a hint of oak. Chambolle–Musigny is the village in Burgundy I usually prefer. Noted for it’s fragrant silky wines. Light, yet packed with flavor.

So we visited a few places, and wrapped up the day at Belle Pente, Stef’s favorite Pinot maker. We quizzed the winemaker on everything he does. His wines are fragrant ans silky and packed with flavor.

Many of his tips, are things we do now or things we’ve heard from other Pinot Noir makers we like. Use gravity not pumps. Rack the wine as little as possible, don’t settle the wine before barrel. 1/3 to 1/2 new oak, medium toast never heavy. It’s very good to hear those things from winemakers you think are doing a good job, at least when they have those things in common.

It was also good to get some validation on things we do in the vineyard that not every one agrees with. We don’t leaf pull, we remove secondary shoots and laterals. We also don’t leave one cluster per shoot. We evaluate each cane and plant and then decide on one cluster or two.

Those things can be controversial, so it was very nice to hear that they do the same things, for the same reasons. A little validation we’re on the right track.

Have we sold out yet?

Yes and No. How’s that for a straight answer?

We have sold all the wine we allocated for direct sales. There’s no more left. So in that sense we are sold out. People who are signing up know for our mailing list are getting a note that says: “Sorry we’ll have wine for you at our next release”. We’re at 239 people on the list now.

There is some wine left though. I set aside four cases for ‘stragglers’ and shipping errors. So far we’ve not had any shipping problems, and all the direct shipment wine but 9 bottles have gone out, so I’m feeling pretty ok about those other four cases being available. If you already have an order form, you can still get wine. At least until 3 of those 4 cases are gone.

The wine is also available at Unwind on Almaden Expwy, in San Jose for $35 a bottle. They had 5 bottles as of a week ago. It’s also available at Olio in Campbell from the wine list for $53 and Twist Bistro in Campbell. Later this month it will also be available at Baci in Vacaville from their wine list.

We spent the weekend out working in our vineyards and getting them in good shape for the Spring.

We suckered, which means doing deep knee bends on each plant and removing growth from the trunk. Stef is still sore. We also did some deer proofing, weed-whacking and sprayed for Powdery Mildew in each vineyard.

Elandrich Vineyard in Portola Valley – Looks just a little slow this year. It’s been a cool spring and the plants are a little behind. Not enough to worry, if anything that may be good and flowering will happen a little later when the risk of wind is less. Wind causes the berries to not flower correctly (called shatter) and the bunches to not have full grapes. The drought has meant less weeds in the vineyard and I’ll have less weed-whacking this year.

The plants are all healthy though and things look good. We’ll focus on shoot thinning next, then try new bird netting this year and see if we can’t get 1500-2500 pounds out of here this year.

Morgan Hill Vineyard – Had a severe deer attack. It looks like we’ve recovered most of the plants, and I’ve got the owner to close the fencing during the day. We aren’t expecting any fruit from this vineyard this year, we’re just training the plants. We should have about 500 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon from here in 2008, and 2-3 tons in 2009.

Llama Vineyard – Bonny Doon – Suckering was actually pretty easy here. We have bunnies! The rabbits eat the suckers of the lower part of the plant, but they can’t reach the fruiting part. Bunnies are actually a help once the plants get established. This vineyard looked really amazing. There are some signs of Powdery Mildew, but we’re on top of the spraying and not expecting problems. There should be at least 1000 pounds of Merlot this year.

THings look really nice, and we’re hoping for a good year!

We didn’t make a lot of wine in 2005. Just 100 cases total. 50 cases of Syrah and 50 cases of Canernet Sauvignon. In 2006 we made 16 barrels, 400 cases, so four times more. Still not a huge amount. This year we’re planning on 23 barrels, about 575 cases of wine.

I big part of this approach was to not make more wine than we could sell ‘part time’. Build up slowly, get the wine out there, build a mailing list and some key restaurants and go from there.

I also know I’m making pretty unique wine. I like wine with a great smell, and well balanced. I don’t like thick wines, and I don’t like wines with brown flavors or jammy flavors, so I don’t want to make wines like that. Those are the kinds of wines that are simple crowd favorites and fill up the bottom shelves at the supermarket. That’s easy appeal, and nothing wrong with that, but I’m not out to compete with Little Penguin. I knew our wine would have to find a market. People who like elegance over thickness and pretty scent over ultra ripe flavor.

I know those people are out there, and I know they will love our wines. But I also knew that making 2000 cases to start off with would have been a hard search to find them.

We’re never going to make 2000 cases of anything is the bottom line. We’ll make small amounts of a few wines from special sites that let me get great balance, scent and flavor in a bottle. 100 cases here, 200 cases there, just small amounts. Copain was successful doing this, and Brian Loring, so I think it can be done. I don’t want a confusing amount of wines, or wines from all over. Our wines will always be from mountain vineyards that let me make a wine I’ll like. I hope enough other people like them too to let us keep making them.

A bad streak of colds, allergies, computer problems and getting ready for the Release Party have kept me from blogging.

I should be back at it now though. The party went very well with 40 people coming and trying our wine. We’ve gotten it out to Olio this week and Twist next week to get on thier wine lists, and almost all the orders have gone out.

I’ll be catching up in the vineyard this weekend and trying to update everyone on what’s going on!.

I’ve thought a lot about making a Pinot Noir. The hard part for me has been finding fruit to buy that I like. There’s not much Pinot Noir available for sale in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I’m also very very picky about the vineyards we’ll use and making sure that they are farmed for the highest possible quality.

That’s meant for the past two years the only vineyard I’ve been interested in has been the Schultze Family Vineyard in the Southern Santa Cruz Mountains. The Schultze’s make what I think is the best Pinot Noir in the Santa Cruz Mountains from their vineyard under the Windy Oaks name. They also sell their fruit to Thomas Fogarty, David Bruce, Testerossa and Mark Alfaro. Jim Schultze is so dedicated to perfection to his vineyard that this is some of the most sought after fruit around.

Every year I call Jim and Judy and beg for fruit, and every year they call back and say, “Sorry”. This year though, Jim said, “Maybe, I can give you 2 tons.” So my fingers have been crossed, they’ll let me know after fruit sets in June if I have a Pinot source. I ordered my barrels just in case, and then haven’t thought much about it.

Then last week, through a series of connections another great source became available to me. The owners of one of the oldest and most sought after vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains called Bradley Brown at Big Basin Vineyards. They were looking for a new winemaker and vineyard manager for their vineyard. Bradley is busy this year planting more Syrah, so he referred them to me.

The vineyard is fantastic, but it was too far away for me to take care of well. At 10 acres it would mean I’d have to dedicate almost 100% of my weekend time to it and I couldn’t see doing that with all the other vineyards we have (We’re up to 5 we take care of, and 3 we consult at now). So, I started making frantic phone calls.

Yesterday I called back the owners and said, “Yes I think we can do it.” Ted at Uvas Creek Vineyards is interested in partnering with us on the project. He’s a fantastic farmer and he’s about 30 miles closer than I am. We can split up the vineyard work, and then split the fruit. We still need to work out the details, but it looks like we’ll have 1-2 tons of Chardonnay and 3-4 tons of Pinot Noir this year.