mourvedre – Stefania Wine

March 6, 2015

New Releases

We have a new release coming out this week. Letters are in the mail. If you don’t get one let us know. We have three wines we’re releasing.

2012 Stefania Cabernet Sauvignon, Crimson Clover Vineyard, Santa Clara Valley

Release Price: $45 per bottle.
Total production: 108 cases

We harvested on 9/22 and sorted it in the field before transport to the winery. The grapes were 100% destemmed and crushed into 2 bins for fermentation on native yeast. The bins were moved inside the winery and punched down twice per day. We followed our normal pressing and settling routine and the wine aged in 2/3 new oak for 21 months.

The wine is typical Crimson Clover Vineyard with expressive black and plum fruit framed with spice and floral notes. There are notes of mocha and blackberry on the finish and round tannins. We expect this wine to age very well. Alcohol 13.7%

2012 Stefania Mourvedre, ‘Restitutor Orbis’, Spur Ranch, San Benito County

Release Price: $32 per bottle
Total production: 101 cases

Our second year of Mourvedre fruit from Spur Ranch. Paul had so much fun with the Latin quote on our first Mourvedre that he had to keep the tradition up. This one is about a 3rd century emperor. We had the chance to use whole berries in the fermentation process in 2012 and combined that with 40% new oak for a very round and flavorful Mourvedre.

The wine has everything someone who could defeat the Alamanni, Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi could want. There’s plenty of dark wild fruit to power you on to crush the Palmyrene Empire and Gallic Empire as well. Alcohol 14.4%

2013 Stefania Chardonnay, Chaine d’Or Vineyard, Santa Cruz Mountains

Release Price: $25 per bottle
Total production: 95 cases

We continued retraining to the Guyot method in the vineyard based on the experiments we had done in 2012. The results were excellent and on 9/14 we harvested 143 bins or 4290 pounds and pressed the must whole cluster in one pressing. The must was transferred to a chilled tank for settling off the gross lees. Brix was 23 with pH 3.36 and TA .82. On 9/15 the wine was transferred off its gross lees into a chilled tank inside and inoculated with QA-23 yeast and yeast food. We maintained temperatures under 65 degrees during tank fermentation but did not super chill the must before transfer.

On 9/22 the wine was transferred to 7 barrels which were filled 2/3 full to finish fermentation. On 10/5 the wine was showing as completed primary fermentation and was reduced down to 5 full barrels + one keg. Lees were stirred at that time. The wine went through Malo with no issues and for the first time since 2008 we did not have to haul the barrels out into the sun in the Spring to finish fermentation.

The wine showed excellent chemistry and we decided to bottle with out fining or filtration. The wine will appear slightly cloudy in glass but is full of ripe fruit and wonderful crispness. Stefania loves this Chardonnay and it’s her favorite we’ve made. There is just 20% new oak and the stone fruit flavors really shine in this wine. Alcohol 13.7%

Anything that does not sell out in from the mailer we will add to the website in mid-April.

February 10, 2015

Settling In

No we haven’t totally dropped of the grid, so it’s time for a quick catch up. We did get moved in to our new place in September and finished our move out of Chaine d’Or and in to our new place in Salinas in December. All our production was at the new facility last harvest and we have a bunch of new wines and some old favorites we’re working on from 2014. We’re very happy with the new facility and it was much easier on us with the additional help to handle set up and clean up. The drive was also much shorter and easier and we put far less miles on the FJ this Fall.

We’ve been very busy of course with all the moving and settling in to our new home. The building that will become the tasting room is all cleaned up and ready to go, we’re just waiting on the government now for permits.

I thought the best way to run through an update was with some pictures:

First the little kittens are growing like crazy and loving their new home.

We got the bar set up in the new house right away:

We’re still eating Primal:

And we did go to New Orleans on our annual trip:

Spending way too much time in the care of Fay at Coops:

When we got home there were never ending chores and clean up to do. We hauled away 8 truck loads of yard debris, cut down treees, repaired things and just general new home stuff like stacking a cord of wood:

We had frequent wildlife visitors with the turkey’s being the most common:

And they like the backyard too:

Stefania hasn’t shot anything yet but she’s ready just in case:

We put a new cellar in and we’re trying to decide what to plant which means lots of research:

Which means more Primal food lick smoked duck legs:

With the New Year I’ve started a garden:

And have more seedlings ready to go in:

All this is enough to tucker out a kitty and keep us from writing regularly. We may be on a monthly summary now, at least until we get the tasting room going.

September 15, 2013

New Wines Released

I’ve just put up the details on our Fall Release:

http://localhost/wordpress/?page_id=10

We have 4 wines we’re releasing, two of them brand new. Offer letter will go out to Mailing List Members this week. Anything left will be available for web orders on October 31st. I’m particularly excited about the Mourvedre. It got great reviews in Chicago where we opened two bottles in August. We do have a Chardonnay from 2012 but will be releasing that as well as our 2012 Pinot Noir in the Spring.

September 14, 2013

More Vineyard Visits

I wrote about the visit and testing at Chaine d’Or we did on Saturday. We also visited a small Syrah vineyard in Los Altos Hills that the owners now maintain all on their own and visited a potential new site in the Gilroy-Watsonville Road area. For those out side of the South Bay, Gilroy and Watsonville are two small towns south of San Jose. The irony of the Gilroy-Watsonville Road is it goes to neither Gilroy or Watsonville. We finished up the day at the Crimson Clover vineyard which is in the town of Morgan Hill behind the big hill everyone things is named Morgan Hill but is really named El Toro. Whoever named things in that part of the valley was definitely trying to confuse people.

Sunday we watched the Saints game in the morning. They seem to have their defense figured out this year which was encouraging. Then we headed to the Mineral Hill vineyard to watch the 49er game with the vineyard owners there and check on the grapes. This will be a hard one to figure out when to pick because the vines are just three years old and a vineyard that young tends to have a great deal of variation from plant to plant. Stefania says it’s really year 7 when the vineyard starts acting like a vineyard, and stops acting like a collection of individual plants.

The grapes planted here are Mourvedre and the yield looks to be pretty high. I’m sure some of the clusters won’t make it and will dry up and some will not be ripe and have to get cut off so probably 75% of what is on the vine now will make it into a fermentation bin. The vineyard is over an ancient creek bed and water still flow under ground so the plants are particularly strong for being three years old. I’m thinking we will pick here right around the 1st of October.

One last picture from Crimson Clover on Saturday. The vineyard tested at 22.25 Brix. Flavors are well past the green state and in between red and black fruit. We set the pick date as September 21st, which is in the normal to early range for the site. With the weather pattern we expect to pick right around 24 Brix. Yield here looks average for the site and I think we’ll get just under two tons. We will also pick the ‘Roxy’ Vineyard at the same time. Roxy is a mix of Syrah, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon that we put in the Haut Tubee Blend. Yield there looks high this year, close to a 1000 pounds. That would be cool actually if we got that much as we could keep the vineyard on it’s own through fermentation and into barrel.

July 17, 2012

Veraison

Many years ago on this blog I said I’d try to not use French words in the blog or when talking about wine. Veraison though is a word that only exists in French. The English translation is: When the grapes turn from green to red. So, everyone uses the word veraison through out the world because it’s easier than saying; “when the grapes turn from green to red”, every time.

It’s a big event for us in the vineyards. It means the grapes are going to start adding color and flavor. It also means it’s almost time for us to stop spraying. The tasks change from maintenance to harvest preparations. We’ll now start topping the vines, that means cutting the long tops off, to get ready for netting. When netting goes on the vineyard work is really done. We usually start that in August but we’ll be a little early this year it looks like.

We had our first veraison last Friday. Millie sent me a picture of it starting in our Pinot Noir vineyard at Noon. When I got home that night the Mourvedre in the home vineyard was also changing color. The picture is from our front yard. We still have a few weeks before all the vineyards change but we seem to be early this year. Last year we had green grapes into September in some spots.

April 23, 2012

Aesthetic Follow Up

I took a few better pictures of the front yard Haut Tubee vineyard to illustrate the comments I made about aesthetics in my update on our Pinot Noir Vineyard. Most of the things we do are simple and you probably would have a hard time noticing the differences. It’s not really an attempt to make it ‘pretty’ as much as one to make it look clean and pleasing.

Below see how the vines don’t have a stake holding up the trunk? Once the vine reaches the cordon wire we remove that stake and let the vine attach to the wire. This removes a lot of metal from the vineyard and lets the plant be seen on its own with no visual distractions.

In this close up you can see there are no ties or clips in the vineyard. There’s nothing to attach the vine to the wire, or the wires to anything else. This vine hasn’t attached on its own so we will use one twisty to tie it off this year. Each vine does have a small vine protector on it to keep it safe from weed whacking. Stef selected guards though that blend in and aren’t too tall. We will use grow tubes, but once the vine is up to the wire we remove it with the stake.

The cover crop between the rows is slow to get started this year, it is a natural mix of crimson clover and California wild flowers. The idea is that the vineyard should look like a natural hillside would and the only thing you should see is the vines and the absolute minimum hardware needed to keep the vines upright.

April 2, 2012

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.

December 4, 2011

Harvest is Finally Done

We’ve had a couple of years where the last task of the year was on Thanksgiving weekend. Usually we had one small lot to get into barrel. This year our last task was yesterday. We had two lots to go into barrel which ended up being 40% of our 2011 production.

I’m actually really happy with the wine we’ve made so far. No problem lots like last years Pinot Noir and the Harvest Moon Cab, Peacock Cab Franc, Crimson Clover and Mourvedre lots I’m really liking so far.

Stefania and I have a lot of blogging and picture to catch up on. Now that we finally have some down time we’ll try and get those up over the next few weeks. Today we have a pig in the Caja China for Millie’s birthday and lots of great wine planned for tonight. It feels like an end of harvest party and I’m enjoying it!

October 6, 2011

Rain – Panic – Calm

It’s raining in Northern California. You may have read newspaper articles about the rain or even seen the occasional TV report. Those reports usually give an air of panic and desperation as wineries try and rush in grapes before they are ‘ruined’ by the rain. Hooey!

We have a rain event every year. Well almost every year. In 2006 there was no October rain, otherwise it’s an annual thing. We do try and bring in the thinned skinned grapes like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay before the rains come. The thick skinned grapes like Mourvedre (in the picture) and Cabernet Sauvignon though will go just fine through the rain.

The key is to let the grapes dry out after the rain and before you pick them. In the picture you can see Mourvedre in our front yard and there are little drops of water on the grapes. Those little drops add up and can dilute the wine, lowering alcohol by as much as 2-3%. That’s why it’s important to let the grapes get some sun and dry out.

We had been scheduled to pick the Haut Tubee vineyards tomorrow, including Red Hen, the Church, and Home vineyards but I just sent a message to Millie and we are postponing until Tuesday. We’ll still go on with Crimson Clover on Sunday as we have 2 days of sun coming and that will be enough to dry out the grapes.

Then what’s next? Do we panic and bring in all the Cabernet out there before it rains again? No, we go to New Orleans for a week to avoid all the panic going on. The Cabs will be ready after October 20th from our testing. Some vineyards will actually be ready around the 31st. That’s normal for us, the warm September helped get us back to normal, so it’s best to stay calm and wait it out.