Tag: Chaine d’Or

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Urgent Care

I think I’ll start this post as a rant.  I’ve been to Urgent Care twice now in the past 6-7 years.  Once for stitches to close a puncture wound in my hand – oyster incident.  The other time was last week.  I didn’t go there, my doctor sent me there.  I had made a regular appointment and she did not have enough of the drug in her office I needed to inject me with.  In fact they tried every office in the building and no one had enough, so she sent me to Urgent Care.

I’m just gonna say if you are in urgent care you should have one of the following on your person – bandage, barf bucket, visible rash, something swollen so much you look like the kid from Mask.  A runny nose or a cough is not Urgent.  I had two of the four by the way.  Otherwise make an appointment for goodness sake.  Don’t make the guy with his eyes swollen shut wait behind you and your runny nose.

So now the back story.  Last Sunday we got an urgent email from Jerry at Chaine d Or.  Deer were in the vineyard and had eaten about 50 plants.  We went up Sunday night to find the problem in the fence.  Jerry had already gotten the parts to repair the fence, but we were coming from the movies and were not really dressed right for fence repair.

The fence was down over about a 30 foot stretch.  A combination of a wood rat den and a down limb had brought it down.  The wood rat was the danger.  They build their dens with poison oak.  I had to cut out a bunch with snipers and a chain saw to make enough room to repair the fence.

It’s an urgent operation.  You have to stop the deer right away or they will come back every night until the vineyard is stripped of leafs.  Stefania got to work putting up dryer sheets around the fence and vineyard.  Deer hate the smell and will avoid the sheets.

I got the area cleared and with help from Millie and Stef got 5 new posts pounded in and 30 feet of new fence up in about 2 hours.

It didn’t set in until Tuesday about noon.  First on my left arm, then most troubling on my neck.  By Thursday morning both arms were covered from elbow to wrist.  I had it on my right leg, waist and back.  It also was in my left ear, forehead, neck and around both eyes.  My right eye was swollen shut.  Stef had it on her right arm, waist and back.  Mine was worse though, probably from the chainsaw throwing poison around.  I had about 5 times more coverage on my body and eyes and ear were the biggest risk.

The doctor put me on a steroid to ease the swelling and that first shot helped right away.  We’re both still red and itchy but recovering.  Hot water helps the most so Stef’s been in the hot tub a fair amount and I shower or wash down every 6 hours or so.  If you wonder why we say we hate deer so much, here’s another reason.  50 lost plants and 3+ weeks of recovery.

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Racking Day(s)

Saturday was a cold and rainy day.  We headed up to the winery for a long day of work inside so at least we’d be mostly dry.  We still had 15 barrels to get through the first racking and sulfuring of the year.  Malolactic fermentation has been slow this year and 5 different lots were just finishing up.

We can’t add sulfur to the wines before Malo has completed or the sulfur will kill the Malo bacteria along with the bad bacteria.  The longer we go though the greater the risk of those bad bacteria showing up so it’s been a tense few months.

Stefania started by setting up her lab and I got the pump, tanks and barrel cleaner ready.  We had lab results back from the lab we have to do our government testing with so we didn’t need to do much in the way of actual measurements, but we would have to prepare SO2 for every wine and Tartaric Acid for a few.

One routine we always have is that a second person must verify that the pump is hooked up right and all the seals on the tanks are closed.  This helps prevent oversight and shooting wine all over the place.

We had five different lots to work with; Crimson Clover Cab ,Harvest Moon Cab, Coastview Syrah, Mourvedre and Haut Tubee.  Everything would get an SO2 treatment of 40-50 ppm depending on the pH of the wine.  The Mourvedre, Harvest Moon and Haut Tubee would also have Tartaric added to lower pH.

We combined some of the Crimson Clover Cabernet, with some Peacock Cab Franc and a little Harvest Moon Cab to start a Santa Clara Valley Cabernet blend.  The rest of the Harvest Moon and the Haut t was kept on its own for now.  We finished up the day about 5PM by filing the tanks with Coastview Syrah in tank #1 and Mourvedre in tank #2 and left them to settle for the night.

We returned the next day to get those wines back in barrel and spent just 3 hours compared to the 8 the day before.  We started our GSM blend by putting some of the Syrah in with some of the Mourvedre, but kept two barrels of each on their own.  In the end we had 14 barrels and topping wine.

Each barrel is rinsed and cleaned as part of the process on the barrel holder below.  The holder allows the barrel to spin and Stefania usually does this job.

I was really happy with the Mourvedre.  Our original plan was to blend all of it into the GSM blend or the Haut Tubee, but we may keep some on its own.  The other wines were all good as well, and I’m excited about the final wines.  After a rough weather year last year it looks like we still ended up with good wine.

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Testing Yourself

Stefania had this idea to host a blind tasting of our wines and compare them to others in the area.  She narrowed it down to Cabernet and decided to focus on a single vintage (2007).  It took some time to pull together but we finally did it on Friday March 16th.

All of the following were served blind in flights of three. The wines were bagged by Jaye and as new wines came in they were mixed in the number rotation so that the ‘new’ wines would not all be the end numbers. Each wine was opened about 45 minutes prior to serving but not decanted. Foils were all removed and wines were served in numbered bags.

Original notes are as I took them down. Thoughts after bags were removed are in parenthesis. I used + when I though a wine’s future score would likely be higher and many of these ended up with a +.

#1 2007 Mount Eden Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Rich, chocolate and classic cab nose. Tannic, lighter on the palate. Should be rockin in 10 years 94+ My WOTN

#2 2007 Cooper Garrod George’s Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dusty, light fruit, clean but just ok 87 pts (much less impressive than a previous bottle I had)

#3 2007 Chaine d’Or, Santa Cruz Mountains
Big green nose, rich, round and tannic, lots of hidden fruit, berry , needs 10+ years 89+

#4 2007 Kathryn Kennedy ‘Small Lot’, Santa Cruz Mountains
Wood influence, spice, red fruit, lighter texture. From a warmer site? Martin Ranch? 89 (Most of the small lot fruit comes from Martin Ranch)

#5 2007 Ridge Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains
American oak on the nose. Very tannic with great balance, light fruit, long finish with berry. 90+

#6 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Less wood, I like this one. Cherry pie, little funky on the finish, greenish tannins, guess of a cooler site 89+

# 72007 P•M Staiger, Santa Cruz Mountains
Sour cherry nose, low oak influence, slight volitile, peppery with light fruit 82 (The only wine I really didn’t care for)

#8 2007 La Honda Lonehawk Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains
Musty, mushroom, slight volitile on nose but well balanced. Finishes oaky. 88. Might be better in 5 years but VA worries me.

#9 2007 Stefania, Santa Cruz Mountains
Big nose, good balance of wood. Best balanced in this group of three with tannin/acid/fruit. Smooth, round, warm site? 92

# 10 2007 Ahlgren Bates Ranch, Santa Cruz Mountains
Green nose, smooth black fruit and good balance, cool site? 89+

# 11 2007 Stefania Uvas Creek Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
Round, spicy, mushroom, great balance and plum fruit. Not especially ‘cabby’ but I like this 91

# 12 2007 Woodside Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Greenish nose, and pepper flavor, short and tannic 85

# 13 2007 Thomas Fogarty, Santa Cruz Mountains
Slight pepper, roundish, black fruit, bright green tint stays through the wine. 5+ years 90+

# 14 2007 Domaine Eden, Santa Cruz Mountains
Menthol nose, balanced, light oak, black pepper and red fruit 92

# 15 2007 House Family Vineyards, Santa Cruz Mountains
Dusty and black pepper, grows on you with good balance. A little funk but nice length. Warmer site? 91+

# 16 2007 Ridge Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
Rich nose with some gren. Sharp red frui, cooler site? Nose of #3 without the ‘balls’. 88

#17 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Dos Rios Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
Woody from a great barrel, Pessec Leognan nose. Dusty, balanced and round. A ‘wow now’ wine with tons of fruit. 93

# 18 2007 Creekview Vineyards, Santa Clara Valley
Funky mint nose. CHalky not roundest of the group has mint without pepper, good finish 88

Everyone voted on thier top three with 5 points for 1st, 3 for 2nd and 1 for third. Group winners where:

1st = #17 2007 Martin Ranch Thérèse Vineyards Dos Rios Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley
2nd = #1 2007 Mount Eden Estate, Santa Cruz Mountains
3rd = #5 2007 Ridge Monte Bello, Santa Cruz Mountains
4th (tie) = #9 2007 Stefania, Santa Cruz Mountains
#3 2007 Chaine d’Or, Santa Cruz Mountains

I also posted this at:

http://forums.winespectator.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3146091161/m/5677060432

You can read comments there and get links to notes from others at the dinner.

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Pick Up Day Saturday March 24th

Pick up day for the Spring Release is this Saturday from 11-3. Here’s the ‘official’ invite:

We would like to invite you this weekend to the winery to taste wines from our current release We will also feature complimentary brick oven pizza from our friends at Mario’s Mobile Pizza.

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=welcome#!/pages/Marios-Mobile-Pizza-llc/352590774772822

When: Saturday, March 24th
Time: 11a.m. – 3p.m.
Where: Chaine d’Or Winery, Woodside
Directions: http://www.chainedor.com/directions.html

We will be pouring wines from our Spring Release:

2009 Crimson Clover Cabernet Sauvignon, $44
2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon, $40
2006 Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Library Release, $40

This is a residential location, parking is limited to the street area. This will likely be the only time we will be open this year. If you have an order from the Spring Release it will be available for pick up. We hope you can join us and we look forward to visiting with you again!

For more information about our wines, you can also visit our website, www.stefaniawine.com

Paul & Stefania

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Our Most Expensive Wine Ever

Saturday I had a full day of work to do in the winery.  All of the barrels needed topping and that takes a couple of hours.  I also was going to bottle the 2010 Chardonnay from the Chaine d’Or Estate.

This was going to be a hand operation since I estimated (correctly) there were only about 10 cases.

Here’s the sad story of the 2010 Chardonnay.  Last year the growing season was cold and foggy at Chaine d’Or well into July.  We were worried that the grapes would never get ripe.  So in mid-July we took the very expensive step of removing all the leafs from the fruit zone to try and get more sun to the clusters.  There were many vineyards doing the same thing.

In early August things seemed ok and it looked like we might be able to pick in October.  We also noticed though that Mildew was starting in the vineyard.  The late verasion had increased the risk of mildew so we were prepared.  We went out and did two treatments, the first with an organic product called Oxidate, and then a week later with Stylet oil.

We zapped the mildew, no problem.  We also left a nice shinny sheen on the grapes for the hottest unexpected August heat wave in memory.  Without leafs the clusters had no protection and baked in the heat.

We knew there would be only a few hundred pounds in the vineyard.  When we eventually did pick we used just the ‘A’ team and it took about four times as long to pick.  They only picked good clusters.  Stefania and I set up a table and as the 30 pound bins came in from the field we hand sorted each cluster and then cut out the bad grapes with scissors.  Grape by grape.

When it was all done we had about 25 gallons of wine.  It was really good, and I put it in a small barrel to age before transferring to a tank for bottling.  We knew though we could never sell this wine.  The cost we estimated was about $165 a bottle for us to produce it.

Stefania decided she wanted it though and we would bottle it for our own use.  She really wants it for her Crab Feed party so that’s what the plan is.

This is the tank lifted up to help the wine flow for hand bottling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first picture is the hand corker I used. I filled each bottle one at a time and corked them with some left over 2008 corks.  No labels for this wine, it would have been too expensive to print a small run.

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Barrel Order

Oak barrels

I thought I was late getting in a barrel order this year, but when I checked my records it was the exact same time last year that we put in an order.  Barrels are a huge expense for us.  We only use French Oak and I select very high end barrels.  The cost, depending on the exchange rate of the Euro, is usually about $1100 a barrel.

Our primary barrel supplier is a French company called Sequin Moreau.  We also use Claude Gillet for our Chardonnay and Ermitage for Syrah, but most of our new barrels are Sequin Moreau and are used on our Cabernets.    Barrels come in two basic formats: 225 liter ‘Bordeaux’ or 228 liter ‘Burgundy, which are slightly fatter and shorter.  For Cabernets I use the Bordeaux barrels.  Next you have to decide on thickness.  They either come in 21mm called ‘Chateau Ferre’ or 27mm called ‘Export’.  I always select Chateau Ferre.  I’ve just heard that it is superior and it comes in a wider selection of barrel types.

The next choice is barrel grade.  Sequin Moreau offers 5 different grades of barrel.  The basic is called ‘Selection Terrior’.  That’s really just a brand name.  The grades represent an increase in the age of the wood and the tightness of the grain.  The older and tighter the wood, the more desirable as the impact of the wood becomes more subtle.  In the past I’ve tried a selection of the top 4 grades from Sequin Moreau.  The one I’ve found I like best is their second highest grade called Selection Vendanges Tardives or SVT for short.  The SVT seems to really bring out the aromatics of the wine and add nice spice and gentle tannin development.  The barrel below ‘Selection Cabernet’ is nice, but just not as fine as the SVT.  There is also a Selection FX which we tried but I thought it was too drying for our wines with too much sweetness.

So this time I ordered all SVT barrels.  They seem to be best for our wine.  The next big choice is ‘Toast Level’.  This is the amount of fire toasting that the barrels get and probably has the largest impact on the finished wine.  There are five levels of toast and the option to toast the heads of the barrels.  The toasts are Light, Medium, Medium Long, Medium Plus, and Heavy.  You can then select with each option to have the heads of the barrel toasted too.

This is probably the thing we’ve learned the most about in six vintages.  Certain vineyards and certain wines respond better to certain levels of toasting.  At a basic level the lighter the toast the more vanilla and simple flavors you get and the more tannin and structure is added to the wine.  The heavier the toast the more complex spicy, smokey flavors and the less tannin extract you get.  For most of our wines, we have more than enough tannin in the grapes and don’t need to add any with the barrel treatment.  For those vineyards we use heavier toasts and even toast the heads.

At first I was reluctant to use Heavy toast or Toasted Heads.  I’ve learned though that in a very tannic site like Chaine d’Or the wine benefits from the complex flavors and it’s best to avoid adding any tannin.  For Chaine d’Or we’ll use a combo of Medium Plus and Heavy toast barrels with Toasted Heads.  For a wine like our Haut Tubee that has lots of Zinfandel and warm site Syrah we’ll use a lighter toast to add some structure to the wine.

We ordered a bunch of different toast levels and combos.  That will give us some flexibility at harvest time.