start the presses

Today we pressed Napa cabernet sauvignon to barrel. Flavors were nice and full with an added bonus of good acidity given the somewhat early harvest. Tannins were relatively soft for this Howell Mountain vineyard as cab from 1000 ft. altitude can be a bit aggressive. We are using Sylvain and Taransaud barrels with tight grained French oak so will watch for subtle oak infusion over the next 18 months or so. This is our first pressing of the year so we are off to a great start!

08 Napa cab is born!

Harvest is well underway with heat spikes in several spots pushing grapes to ripeness a week or two earlier than last year. This means our Napa cabernet is already happily fermenting away. These grapes came in very clean and the fermentation is going well so we will probably extend maceration (fancy word meaning sit there with the skins and juice all together) to get the full wow out of this super-premium Howell Mountain fruit. Then it's pressin' time into French oak barrels for that important 2 year nap!

WOW - 2006 Hein pinot released

Official release of the first of the 2006 vintage - Anderson Valley, Hein Vineyard. Get some - yum.

www.rockroom.com

WOW - 2006 is a wrap

With a bottling session Saturday we got the last of the 2006 co-op wines (our experimental not-for-sale stuff made right here in Austin) safely in bottles. 120 bottles give or take a few. Thanks to those who stopped by to help. Hopefully the takeaway bottles made it worthwhile. Some very promising stuff here. The really big news from Saturday is the barrel-aged bordeaux blend (BDX for short) that is a 60/25/15% blend of merlot/cab/cab franc. These grapes, from different Napa vineyards, were co-fermented so have lived together now for about 20 months. It is a happy partnership that is so far showing up as a really big wine. Finally, at the other end of the spectrum, is our simple blend, tagged simply Red #2. This is mostly a second wine made from pink "bleed juice", taken from our zinfandel and BDX grapes to concentrate them, fermented on merlot, cab, cab franc and zin press skin. The resulting wine was a light fruity red that was then blended with a little barrel-aged zinfandel to give it a little heft. Still an easy-drinking red that will be fun this fall. Finally, we bottled a small test batch of a new zinfandel vineyard blended with a bit of our standby zin (both Russian River AVA but very different grapes nonetheless). Early indications are that this best suited to being a blending zin as it displays some striking peppery and herbal aromas that might be too much all alone. We will watch to see how it develops but it is an interesting contrast to our fruit-driven standby vineyard.

W.o.w. - shiner anyone?

So in Texas when we talk "shiners" we usually mean beer and usually bock style Shiner Bock beer at that, but in the case of this week's wine of the week it is an unlabeled bottle of wine - a shiner - that happens to hold our own inaugural sparkling wine. The base wine for this was our 2006 Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay and the wine is currently in champagne bottles becoming, we hope, our own tasty blanc-de-blancs. If you have wandered through the storage (or "elevage" as the French would say) caves/warehouses of a decent sparkling wine maker you have seen these shiners by the thousands laying humbly with their bottlecaps on waiting for a year or two or three to allow layers of flavor to develop in that bottle. This is methode champenoise and is the only way to laboriously make decent bubbly. How do you get a sparkler of your very own? Hang with us - we're willing to try making anything! And in this case it is going quite well I would say. Maybe we should pop one of these at the next co-op get together so you can see how good it is getting...

rockroom's white debut - 07 chardonnay

Here it is folks, going into bottle after 9 months in barrel - our Alder Springs Vineyard chardonnay. This wine saw oak by way of previously used French oak to avoid an overdose of barrel influence to this wine as we get to know the vineyard and it's ability to handle oak. Remember these grapes had an extreme hang time going well into November before they were picked from their hillside vineyard way up in Mendocino County and we really want this premium fruit to lead the way on this wine. So far it has a very food-friendly crispness to it with nice citrus and pear aromas and flavors. A couple months to get itself together in the bottle and we should have a great seafood wine come spring 2009. Sorry to make you wait, but we will sell no wine before its time. Hey, that could be a good tagline. Let me check to see if anyone has used it before...

Pinot bottling 2007 - graduation day!

Our 2007 pinot noirs developed beautifully in barrel over the last 9 months or so and were ready for their big day today to go into bottle. Sort of high school graduation for our babies - brings a tear to your eye, right? There's Pete in the photo making sure labels stay lined up as bottles get filled, topped with a blast of nitrogen to eliminate oxygen, corked (with our own custom rockroom corks of course) and topped with shortie capsules. Now for some bottle aging so that all those flavors can integrate and the wine can grow up a little more. Expect a spring debut for our 2007 pinot noirs if all proceeds quickly, fall of 2009 if maturity comes slowly. Hey, you can't rush greatness, it just has to come!

WOW Austrian White

Dipping south from Germany we visit the land of edelweiss fame and find some stellar white wine. Greuner Veltliner, the name of the grape and the wine, is a terrific food wine with crisp acidity, some pleasant grassy meadow aromas and a soft mouthfeel with a finish that lingers nicely. Works great with Weiner schnitzel (around here pork is the only, not the other, white meat) and is just as nice with cheese or as pictured with mousse pate. You may have to search a bit to find one of these in the U.S. as Austria does not get its own section in many American wine shops. I would say it is worth the search for these moderately priced beauties if you have a hankering for an interesting white.

Not so Bad-en

Baden is the southwest corner of Germany and is home to the Black Forest and much of the country's production of red wine. It is a stretch to call these "rotwein"s red as most are more like rose'. Many are sweet and are consumed blended with water. The kind of things you do when the flavors are not that great. It is mostly just too dang chilly for red grapes to ripen enough such that wines like these Spatburgunders (pinot noir outside Germany) taste much like what you would expect from France or California. Still, they do seem to work just fine slightly chilled and served with mildly flavored weisswurst or bockwurst. Prost!

Wines of Wurttemburg

Several days in western Germany just east of the Black Forest provided enough time to try a few regional specialties. The reds were light and fruity, the whites very crisp. Lemburger red was fine and the surprise was a barrel aged chardonnay that was in all ways a white Burgundy proxy. Really outstanding with that whole cool weather chard profile of acidity and minerality but softened by the barrel treatment. Unfortunately, many reds in this region are not really made from fully ripened grapes so are more of a rose and are bottled with residual sugar, probably to cover what would otherwise be some unripe weirdness. The final travesty is that these semi-sweet wines are often mixed with water by the locals to make a thin beverage that is really no more than a thirst quenching alternative to beer. The key to finding the better wines is to look for the word "Trocken" on the label (that "dry" auf Deutch) and "barrique" indicating that it was actually in a small wooden barrel at some time in its life. Be ready to pay a whole 2 to 5 euros extra for this - well worth it. Prost!

WOW - cool pinot

As expected we are fitting in a few stops for wine as we trek across France and into Germany. In Alsace near the eastern border of France we ran across the full pinot family: blanc, gris and noir. Here in Strasbourg we had a typical pinot noir for the region: light, crisp and served chilled. Almost like a full flavored rose. Great with veal and mushrooms.

WOW - Just Merlot?

Now this is not a wine of the week you will find at HEB or anywhere else in Austin or Texas or the Ooh-S-Ahh for that matter. It's just that with lunch at the floating Cafe Seine just steps from the Eiffel Tower, Just Merlot was just fine. But then drinking any French wine in Paris is probably just fine. Watch for more totally useless wine picks as we wind our way across France and into Germany. Doing important research to keep rockroom at the forefront of winemaking!

San Francisco Pinot Call-it-a-Day

Rockroom managed to pull off our first ever industry tasting today at San Francisco Pinot Days big finale tasting at Fort Mason and I must say it went well. Pouring the pre-release (as in so far only available to you co-op faithful) 2006 and the current release (as in almost sold out) 2005 Hein Vineyard pinots we got many cudos on the wine. Reactions ranged from "hey that's nice" to "wow, that's really good". So I would say our joint winemaking collaboration is working out well, which of course comes as no surprise to those of us that have been sipping and sampling along the way. So for now we will keep on pushing the boundaries of small production winemaking, OK?

06 Napa cab bottles

The last of the 2006 rockroom custom wines goes to bottle today. Hurray! Pete made the bottling line hum and we knocked it out in an hour or so. And now, after waiting 20 months or so since harvest, we wait some more. After a few months settling down in the bottle the hard edges will ease up and we should have a very nice food-friendly Napa cab. The predominant character in this wine comes from Howell Mountain fruit selected from 2 vineyard blocks with about a 5% dash of lush fruit-forward merlot and a similar dash of deep dark malbec rounding it out.

w.o.w. - gettin your vino bang for the buck

Next time you want something special but a $50 wine from a top boutique producer is a bit over the top, consider an appellation blend. Like this killer 2006 Sonoma Coast pinot from Siduri. Siduri makes wine from dozens of vineyards in California and Oregon and uses a small batch approach to experiment with different yeasts, fermentation approaches, barrel selections and press fractions. As bottling time approaches the best of the best barrels go to the vineyard designated wines with the next tier of barrels going to blends from multiple vineyards within the same appellation. So for example, while about 20 barrels of Sonatera Vineyard wine made it into the vineyard designated bottling, another 13 or so barrels (still really good juice!) went into this bottling, along with wine from two other Sonoma Coast vineyards. So you get solid regional character year after year and pay about 40% less than the vineyard wines that make up the blend. Making for a great Saturday wine to serve with wood-grilled salmon and walleye!

w.o.w. - ya gotta start saving

As a fan of ripe bananas I figured out long ago that today's banana is edible but in a week it will sweeten and gain flavor. No added cost, just time. Same deal with wine, especially reds. Everyday wines are fine today but will often improve, sometimes dramatically, with even a year or two of aging. So if you are not already, you must start setting aside some wines to revisit at a later date. This 2000 Guigal Crozes Hermitage is a great example. A simple 20 dollar wine a few years ago, this French syrah has matured into a flavorful intense wine that went great with an order of County Line smoked brisket. Well worth the wait with flavors way beyond its unpretentious status and price tag. So how do you end up with a few humble gems like this? My suggestion is that each time you do a wine buy, get enough bottles to get the volume discount and include a couple picks for the cellar. Maybe grab an extra bottle of a red you like that has just a bit more tannic edge or acidic tang than the typical juicy jam-bomb. Even if your cellar is a dark corner of the coat closet, you will be rewarded over time with a couple cases of eclectic wines to be popped after a year or two of bottle aging. Can be fun to share these with friends over a special meal.

wow - time to break out that chard!

One summer favorite that just screams for a full flavored chardonnay is grilled seafood and veggies. Toss some sliced squash, zucchini, onions and mushrooms in a ziplock with a splash of balsamic vinaigrette and grill along side a slab of fresh salmon (or in this case fresh steelhead trout). Either of the 2006 rockroom co-op chards we made goes great with this simple supper so if you ended up with some, pop that cork! Remember, the wine we made here in Austin is not cold stabilized so if you chill it for more than a few hours you might end up with a bit of tartrate crystalized in the bottom of the bottle - a natural grape byproduct, it is cream of tarter for your next lemon meringe pie!

Dry Creek Co-op

I spent the last few days meeting with grape sources and crush alternatives and did a healthy dose of field reseach bellied up to winery tasting bars around Sonoma County. Michelle Baker was our gracious hostess with the mostest at Family Wineries in Dry Creek Valley. With 8 wineries under one roof (including my personal favorite Collier Falls who recently got that best of show trophy you see on the bar) it really reminded me of our own little co-operative effort in Austin. As we chatted with her Michelle revealed that she is not only a friendly face behind the Family Wineries tasting bar but also writes about wine for Wine Country This Week, Spotlight’s Wine Country Guide and Jane magazine. It was a great stop and I highly recommend it as you work your way through Dry Creek on the way to the Dry Creek Grocery for picnic supplies, water to rehydrate and toothpaste to get scrub your zinfadeled teeth. Cheers!

wow - patience rewarded

I was reminded this Memorial Day weekend about the benefits of aging and breathing to a big red wine. Like this 2002 Napa syrah from Novy. A good fruit forward syrah in its youth, it has gained even more smoky, gamey complexity with a few cellar years. But it took being open a couple hours for the really great stuff to kick in. Glad I waited (well for part of the bottle anyway).

wow - pinot of a different color

Related to pinot noir, little green pinot blanc grapes make a great refreshing white that is a tad more serious and complex than you average quaffer but still not as heavy as most chardonnays. Tart and tangy, these grapes thrive in Alsace France and into Germany (call it "weissburgunder") and also do quite well in the cool Willamette Valley in Oregon. Great seafood wine or a complement to creamy sauces or cheese. On the healthy side, it really brought out the lemon in a lemon-pepper roasted chicken. Or just sip it on a hot day - yum! I picked this 2006 Adelsheim up at Austin Wine Merchant - 17 bucks.

wow - unAmerican white?

Pine Ridge makes this crisp delicious dry white using 80% chenin blanc and the rest viognier. Now do you ever see such a wine on a menu or at a tasting? You would in France and certainly would in South Africa where, sometimes called "steen", chenin blanc is one of the most widely consumed wines. Stateside, however, chenin blanc has a bad rap as something that should come in a big green jug. All because the grape was never raised carefully for flavor but was instead turned into a workhorse of Central Valley California bulk wine where it flourishes but becomes unremarkable. At probably its most lofty form, French Vouvray can be $100 a bottle chenin blanc that can age well for decades. This much more humble Pine Ridge ages just fine on the front seat of the car on the way home from Whole Foods where I picked it up for $9. As Texas winegrowers search for grapes to grow that fit our hot climate, they would do well to consider this high-acid grape that can produce great refreshing wines ranging from dry to sweet.

wow - one swede pink

Here from Italian producer Letizia, another really good dry rose ("rosato" in Italian) from a pretty interesting Italian, well Sicilian actually, varietal: nero d'avola. This variety does well growing in the Sicilian heat (Texas grape growers should take note!) and can produce big barrel-aged reds, but in these grapes give heft to a very full flavored aromatic pink that is great with prosciutto and a sliver of sharp cheese. Yet another terrific summer quaffer! I was sipping this wine with lunch in Sweden (!) but don't go that far for a bottle - look for a nero d'avola rosato near you.

w.o.w. think pink

As summer approaches you just gotta think pink. I know all the pushback: pink wine is sweet, pink wine is not "real" wine, and of course my favorite: real men don't drink pink....ANYTHING. Well, set aside those cliche's for a minute and consider, there is a LOT of dry rose out there that is not the least bit sweet - just as dry as a chardonnay or sauvignon blanc but with more heft and complexity. So while whites may do fine, something like, say, a good spaghetti carbonara with that bit of egg and pancetta (hmmm... Asti comes to mind), is a whole different dish with a dry rose. Like this UNTI 2007 Rose: 65% grenache 35% mourvedre, all farmed at UNTI's own vineyards in Dry Creek Sonoma. Now that is real wine. Can't find UNTI at the store? Order direct like I did - go to the link above and you are a few clicks and a credit card away from having some wine within a week. Hurry though - this is not a wine to have shipped in the heat of the summer. So now, should I address that real men drinking pink wine issue? Guess not, as coming from someone that likes pink wine it might sound defensive.

wow - unexpected bargains

Sure, Ken Brown pinot noirs are really good stuff and are a good pick when you run across them, but I call out this bottle of 2005 Santa Rita Hills for a specific reason. On a recent R&R trip to San Francisco we ran into a small grocery to pick up some wine, cheese, etc for a picnic lunch. Gorgeous spring day and it had to be done. Scanning the wine shelves it was easy to see they organized horizontal by varietal and vertically by price. Down there on the bottom shelf, not where I expected to find a wine I was willing to buy, sat a few Ken Brown pinots. No price. Asking a busy checkout clerk, she had someone run check and came back with $9.99 - bottom shelf, right? I went back and got the other two bottles, so ended up with $120 worth of great wine for 30 bucks. The point? When you know the wines you love (in this case pinot noir) always consider lower-priced bottles that have vineyard designations or special appellations (in this case Santa Rita Hills) that indicate limited production. The wine industry is complicated and mistakes often get made, so price is not always a good indicator. In fact, let me know sometime if you want to hear about a bottle of 1973 Stags Leap Cellars cab that was on a clearance shelf in the busiest wine shop in Houston on the busiest day of the year. . .

07 barrel samples ready to taste

The 2007 wines are ready for tasting! I recently brought chardonnay, syrah and cabernet samples so we can monitor progress in our most recent barrels. Certainly not finished wine but fun to try as we watch the evolution. Hope to see you in the rockroom Austin headquarters this week for a sniff, swirl and sip.

wow - big ol pinot

Yeah I know what you're thinkin. You're thinkin "why more hype about pinot?", right? I mean yeah it is heavenly stuff when done right, but there are so many more wines out there so why does it always have to come back around to pinot noir? Well keeping in mind that the rockroom approach is that wine is meant to be enjoyed with food and friends, you generally will not do better than a pinot noir. Take for example this 2003 Lucia pinot noir - their Santa Lucia Highlands(that's loo-see'-ya, not loosh-ee'-ya for those playing at home) appellation blend. Big, fruit forward and flavorful enough to drink like a wine cocktail, it is more at home with a really flavorful dish, like this braised lamb shank with cabbage. It works because the wine has enough acidity to act like a little sip of sorbet in between each bite. The oak influence is there but not overdone and the fruit is dark but not jammy so it doesn't compete with the food flavors. Got it? The concept I mean. Getting Lucia wine, made by Jeff Pisoni in Sonoma County, CA, is a little tougher. Google it or call 800.946.3130 - you'll be glad ya did.

wow - messy is a good thing

Here is a beautiful and balanced white that has it all going on. Floral aromas, citrus and pear flavors, and a honeyed mouth coating quality. Yummy Soave from Verona Italy. $16 at Tony Mandola's on Lamar. Oh, and messy in that it is not cold stabilized so after a day in the chiller it will snow a little cream of tarter.

blending fun

This week I got a chance to do some experiments with master blender Kian Tavakoli on our 2006 Napa cabernet sauvignon. Staying with 100% Napa wines it was amazing how small dabs of a different cab or malbec can punch it up. Our favorite by a long shot was a small addition of a Napa benchland cab (remember our base wine is Howell Mountain) and a tiny dab of Malbec from Coombsville (far southern Napa Valley). The blend will continue to barrel age and could even see more blending later.

wow - good godello

Always good to have a few interesting whites on hand for the porch-sittin' warm spells we get every winter. Here is a charmer from cool northwest Spain: godello grapes turned wine by Abad Dom Bueno. About 20 bucks - delish.

crankin some zin

While the grownups yakked Alex supplied the muscle to separate our Russian River zin from its skins. Our co-op reds are now pressed and will age for a year or so in their barrels.

pinot press

Our Carneros pinot noir finished primary fermentation and we pressed it today. 2 different pinot clones from the same vineyard - UCD18 for color and bright acidity, Dijon clone 115 for earthy aromas and flavors. Now for malolactic fermentation in barrel and aging. While we worked we sipped on a Loring Rosella's Vineyard pinot from 2005 - great inspiration for our humble little wine!

uh-oh, wine is happening

During Prohibition there was an enterprising company that would send out blocks of dried zinfandel grapes with a label on the package that said "warning - do not add water and yeast or wine may result". Well I feel I must warn you that those grapes we had delivered to Austin are now turning into wine. Just the way it goes, expecially when you pitch in a little wine yeast. Here is a photo of the pinot noir frothing away as yeast eat sugar and spit out alcohol. The process is moving fast and we will be pressing pinot and zin in the coming week.

grapes arrive!

The grapes for our 2007 rockroom winemaking co-operative wines are now in Austin! Two different clones of Carneros pinot noir, 250lbs of primo Russian River Valley zinfandel and enough Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay juice to make a nice little quarter barrel of chard. Moving these grapes toward wine-dom starts today and the weekend will certainly see some key steps take place. Call or email if you want to drop in and see how your wine is starting life!

wow - not screwy

Here is a nice little California pinot noir you should try - a good deal for around 20 bucks. Instead of a cork you will discover a neat little glass stopper on top. As cork replacements go it is more like opening a perfume bottle than a quart of Ripple. Nice.

California crush finale

Rockroom's 2007 crush came to a close yesterday with the pressing of our White Hawk Vineyard syrah. The wines now begin their beauty sleep leading to bottling in 2008 or 2009, depending on varietal. Of course by then we will have some 06 wines to enjoy!

wow - it's not what you think

You might be thinking that you have seen this bottle on the shelf before - a very decent Spanish garnacha for 8 bucks or so, right. But if you look closer (OK, not at the crappy phone pic above) you will notice this says Reserva and is a blend: garnacha and tempranillo (the grape of Rioja). And it says 1999. Currently on the shelf at the HEB on 41st street this is a fascinating wine for all of about $11. A real steal. Now where can you find a well aged red for under $15 right off the shelf? Get some of this- good stuff!

w.o.w. - chard is ready

Hopefully you have a few bottles of our 2006 Carneros chardonnay bottled just 2 months ago. The wine is already showing nice classic chardonnay character and you really should pop one now so you know how it started out. Sure, age a couple of them but don't miss the chance to try this solid charonnay early. cheers!

w.o.w. - chilly sauv blanc

As summer draws to a close here in Texas there is still enough sun and heat to merit popping a well chilled white. I was pleased to open one of our own rockroom wines - a 2005 Napa sauvignon blanc - and find it full of good citrus and floral aromas and grapefruit and green apple flavors. Crisp, bright and great with light food and a hot day. Some of you still have a bottle or two of this wine - enjoy it now while the weather is warm! Better yet, sip it next to the 2006 version we made and lets talk about which is better...

you've read the book and drunk the wine: time for the movie!

On a recent winemaking excursion to California a roving cameraman grabbed me for a quick interview on the goings-on at rockroom as we make the 2007 wines. Click here for a link to the movie - a preview to yummy wine yet to come...

Pressing pinot

Today we pressed the Hein Vineyard pinot noir to barrels. The first of the 07 wine is on its way! The wine went into Francois Freres French oak "zebra" barrels which are made from some new and some old barrel staves. This will moderate the oak flavors in the wine so that they do not overpower that yummy Anderson Valley fruit. Be ready come Thanksgiving 2008.

syrah pumpover

Deep color and bold fruit flavors come out during a cold soaking of syrah grapes. Here some Napa syrah from the Page Nord vineyard get a pumpover of juice to keep washing the good stuff from the skins before fermentation begins. Judging from the dark pink foam that is forming it looks like some naturally occuring yeast are beginning to have their way with the graps.

Oregon pinot noir

A visit to Siduri in Santa Rosa, CA where we were busy sorting pinot noir from Oregon's Willamette Valley. It has been a challenging year in Oregon with overcast, rain and even hail in spots, but so far things look pretty good for Siduri as the fruit rolls in for some killer pinot.

picking begins

Harvest 2007 - Some picking bins of pinot at beautiful Van Der Kamp Vineyard in the Sonoma Coast.

One by one the rockroom vineyards are being harvested here in California. Hein Vineyard pinot noir was first as it came in last week on September 25th. Fermentation is going great and I think we are looking at a very good year for Anderson Valley. Bohemian Vineyard pinot noir, new for us this year, came in yesterday (October 4th). Little clusters with tiny tiny berries, I am very excited about this wine. Our wine will be a mix of Dijon grape clones 115 and 777 with a little bit of 667. The vineyard, just outside the tiny town of Freestone, was 36 degrees the morning of harvest and our hands were getting numb sorting grapes - this is one chilly site! As appelations go, this is much more of a Sonoma Coast climate than Russian River Valley, the designation that this vineyard carries. Another sorting yesterday was for a bit of a stealth project - a rockroom barrel collaboration on a single barrel of super-premium Napa cabernet sauvignon. But hey, if I tell you about it here, it won't be a stealth project any more!

wow - bubbles!

Someone had a birthday around here this week and bubbly was in order. Bubbly and chocolate that is. Now Champagne is lovely with dark chocolate (like this Miles of Chocolate brownie) but what is even better? - Pink Champagne! No, not some syrupy thing - I am talking bone dry brut Champagne with just a touch of fruit from brief contact with pinot noir grape skins. Great aromas, crisp flavors and a long yeasty finish. It's Besserat Bellefon NV Brut Rose Champage in this case (about 40 bucks at Vino Vino on Guadalupe). And just so you know, Vino Vino is the place for pink bubbly from under $10 to $50+.

Hanging out in the vineyard

Wine country is buzzing with harvest anticipation as warm sites pick and cool sites get ready. New to rockroom for 2007 is this cool site - Bohemian Vineyard in Freestone just a grape's throw away from the chilly Pacific. While much of Russian River picked pinot noir days or even weeks ago, these grapes will hang at least another week. Good for us as the best pinots come from these slow ripening sites.

punch

Punching down some of the first pinot to come in - not ours yet: it is still hangin' out in the vineyard. Soon though...

06 taste test

It may be harvest 2007 but let's not forget we have 2006 wines that need a little TLC! Today I sat down with barrel samples of our 06 Hein Vineyard pinot and played with some blends. Great news! - each barrel has something good to add and the resulting blend is better than any one barrel. More good news is that the wine will be ready to bottle as soon as harvest is done and the bottling line can be set up. Hmmm - could there be some pre-release wine to sample with roast turkey? Stay tuned!

Harvest has begun!

It's official - our Alder Springs chardonnay high up in the hills of Mendocino County (that's the vineyard in the photo) will be picked on September 3rd making it the first of our grapes to go to the custom crush in San Francisco. Hurray! I will be zipping out there soon, hopefully as grapes comes in and will keep you posted. Rest assured though, I have worked out detailed winemaking plans with the folks out there so there is no mystery about what to do when our grapes arrive at the crushpad. They have a great crew and have staffed up, added another top-of-the-line Italian membrane press and are ready for the big harvest that lies ahead. All reports I have been getting are that harvest this year is 1) about 2 weeks earlier across California and 2) healthy with no troublesome rain showers (causes mildew and dilutes flavors) or whithering heat (does not give grapes recovery time at night). Bottom line - we are looking good!

wow - a bright white

Summer in Texas is coming to its steamy climax and the Hill Country grapes are getting picked for the 2007 vintage. A soggy summer for sure so hats off big-time to Texas growers who had their hands full getting grapes picked and vineyard fungus managed. As the heat continues, stock up on some fun refreshing whites. Like this inzolia (that's the name of the grape) from Italy. Actually Sicily to be exact. A rich, viscous wine unlike the usual simple Italian white, this one works well to sip on the porch or enjoy with something creamy - brie or alfredo sauce. A pretty big white but not at all chardonnay-ee so no worries for those of you not crazy about chard. I picked this bottle (and 5 others) up at Vino Vino on Guadalupe - with the 15% discount it was about $17. Good stuff.

bottling the 06 chard

Sunday ended up being bottling day for our co-op 2006 Carneros chardonnay. The second of 3 chard batches for 06, this one is classic Cali with that creamy vanilla caramel thing going on. Yum! This was of course to be expected as this wine was fermented from its raw juice state in a small French oak barrel and stored in that same barrel to pickup some of those expensive and exotic flavors. Labels will get printed soon and then we will have a "label your own" get together, so watch your email for that...

wow - a working vacation

I am taking a brief break from vacation to dutifully post a wine of the week: I suggest that next time you are in Berkeley, CA and hungry for a bite of lunch you stop in and enjoy a glass of the house zinfandel at Chez Panisse - no kidding! We found ourselves in this situation after a little Berkeley shopping (Zac had to have some Birkenstocks from Berkeley) and got lucky with no reservations as they had a couple no-shows. Fabulous lunch of course and great fun to visit Alice Waters' hallowed shrine of the Slow Food Movement. The wine is made for Chez Panisse by Green and Red Vineyards and is a yummy balance between great zin fruit and a bit of earthy seriousness.