Santa Clara Valley – Stefania Wine

February 26, 2015

Work Goes On

That’s it, the new tasting room. Doesn’t look like much yet, and it won’t be much as we start out, but it’s in place and in the permit process. Our plan is to roll the doors up and have people come right in to what will be card tables at first. As we get going we’ll make improvements (like interior walls and a ceiling). We’ve applied to have the outdoor area available also so we can set up some picnic benches for people to enjoy the outside.

We’re working on the parking situation this weekend. There is room for about 20 cars right now in the drive through and up to 20 more along Madrid Road. The problem is we’ve had two crashes through the front in the last month and I’ve had to remove and cut down all the trees that created a barrier between the road and the parking area. I’m putting a new ‘Defense in Depth’ in the front with 500+ pound boulders, 6×6 posts, redwoods and a fence.

In the meantime the property is keeping us very busy. Here’s last weeks activity. This is the back of the property along Madrid where I can have overflow parking before 5 hours with the weedwhacker.

This is after I finished. I wish I had taken more before and after photos. I’ve already done a ton of clean up inside the tasting room, but didn’t take a single before picture to share. Oh well

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.

August 28, 2014

and…..Big News Part 3

The new place. Nope we’re not moving to New Orleans, that was the first guess of a few people. We found this nice ranch house just outside of Gilroy right on the Santa Clara Valley Wine Trail.

The ‘fast ball down the middle’ was being offered a property where we currently manage the vineyard. We hadn’t thought about moving, or the South Valley as a location, and we had no idea if we could come close to affording it. We dove right in though and started doing our research and putting together our list of things we needed and wanted in a house. That first vineyard house didn’t work out but we decided after viewing a dozen or so properties to make it happen somewhere.

Stefania actually found it on line and it was in contract but we asked our agent if we could go see it because it looked like it was a benchmark for what we were after. We loved it but houses in contract in Santa Clara County NEVER go to the back up offer so we didn’t get our hopes up. A few weeks later though we got another fastball when the contract fell through. The owners really wanted their next offer to come from ‘country people’ and not ‘city people’ who would understand all the complications of wells, wildlife, propane and country living. Our agent told them “Are you kidding they are farmers and own a winery”.

I’ll put the address in our Fall offer letter for people on our mailing list, but here are some of the highlights:

The hillside, were we will plant the new Haut Tubee vineyard with Cabernet Sauvignon and Mourvedre. We have just over 2 acres total and will plant about one.

The new back patio where friends and visitors can finish off those bottles of wine and dip into the scotch and cigar collection. If you look closely you’ll see there’s a breezeway. On the left is the main house, on the right is the wine cellar and guest suite. The guest suite has a separate entrance and a full bath, bedroom and kitchen (as soon as we install the appliances). We finally have a place for our out of town visitors. The original owners did canning and built a full cool room that we’ll convert into a temperature controlled wine cellar.

The new kitchen. This should make it much easier to pull together those dinners for 10-20 we seem to have all the time.

My plan is to get in the pool on the first day. I’m going to wear my suit under my moving clothes 🙂

This second garage was used to sell fruits and vegetables grown on the property for many years. I’m going to revive that garden as soon as I can. This building though will become our new tasting room. There’s enough room to park 20-30 cars at a time and have an office as well as tasting room. It’s just a shell right now so we have to clean it up and put some walls in place. Depending on how harvest goes and the permitting process we may try to open as soon as Nov 1 but early next year is more likely.

We are very excited and can’t wait to have our first visitors. Our move date is Friday Sept. 5th.

September 15, 2013

New Wines Released

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

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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 3, 2013

Chicago

At the end of August we made our semi-annual trip to Chicago. We actually go more often than every other year but those other trips are usually for my day job. This particular trip was all for fun. Our friend Otis hosts a blow out wine party and that would be the main event on Saturday night.

We arrived in town to great weather. There were a few thunderstorms on Thursday but other wise it was perfect. Below is the view from our hotel room along the Chicago River.

We arrived Wednesday afternoon in time to check in to the hotel and walk into the River North area to try out a place new to us called Havana that Stefania spotted on the way in. We had a light dinner and a few cocktails including a really good Pisco Sour.

Thursday was our one ‘working day’. We had a long lunch at the Frontera Grill while we waited out the thunderstorms. We then went to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy wine glasses and then Fox and Abel for cheese and salami for that evening. We hosted a get together of about 15 local Chicago friends and customers to taste 15 of our wines. I brought older vintages and the 2011 Mourvedre and 2011 Santa Clara Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which we’ll release in a few weeks.

We were scheduled to run from 6 -8 PM but actually went from 5:45 to 11:30 PM!

Friday was all about beer. We started the day at Binny’s buying a few things we can’t find in California. The Goose Island brewery is right next door to Binny’s so we had another long lunch there. We met up with a friend who also happened to be there for lunch and he took us to another small beer focused bar called The Map Room.

Saturday we walked down State Street from our hotel and ended up at Hugo’s Frog Bar. A friend in California had highly recommended it and our bartender Chris happened to be from New Orleans. We had a great time and I worked my way through the Bourbon cocktails starting with a Manhattan.

Next up was an Old Fashioned. We had a big long lunch with frogs legs, a wedge salad and gumbo soup. Stef got the prime rib sandwich and I had a rib eye. We ordered a 2001 Cos d Estournel to go with lunch. It would be our only meal of the day so we went all out.

Saturday night we took a small bus up to Northbrook and enjoyed dozens of great wines on a beautiful Chicago night. We had to hurry home on Sunday for work instead of staying to Monday like we’d usually do but had a nice lunch at Purple Pig and flew out Sunday evening.