Vineyard Visit

Exciting news. My liquor license arrived this week! I can now legally sell alcohol. All I need now is some wine to sell and that’s not too far off. If all goes well, I will be bottling the 2006 Syrah, Stagecoach Vineyard, Napa Valley towards the end of May. I’ll let it get some bottle age and then release it in the fall. However, keep your eyes peeled for a future post that will be offering the wine at a special pre-release price. If you want to see a copy of my liquor license then click here.




Last weekend I visited Paul and Vivian Furlong. They own Furlong Estates Vineyard in the Alexander Valley. They have 4 acres of vineyards, primarily Syrah. The vineyard has a wonderful location. It is a steep hillside and the vines produce very small grapes bursting with intense flavor. The vines have just started to bud out and you can already see the flower clusters forming. Last year I managed to get 1.5 tons from them. I went up there so that they could try a barrel sample and also to see how the vineyard is doing. The wine tastes great. It’s a very dark; almost black Syrah with a wonderful bouquet of black fruits and spice (with some ginger notes). Even at this young age, the wine is pretty smooth, with a nice balance between the fruit and the tannin. This is a big meaty/minerally Syrah. I only have 3 barrels of it (about 75 cases), but it will be worth waiting for. The Furlongs really liked it and I should be getting 2–3 tons this year.

52 Glasses of Wine in One Day!

Today I went to a barrel tasting of wines produced from grapes from Stagecoach Vineyard. Stagecoach Vineyard is the first vineyard I contracted with for grapes. I will be bottling my 2006 Stagecoach Vineyard Syrah in about a month from now, but today’s tasting was of wines from the 2007 vintage. Jan Krupp, the owner of Stagecoach hosted the event. Wineries were asked to submit a barrel sample of the wine they made from last year’s grapes. Today we assembled at Coles Chop House in Napa and tried all the non Cabernet Sauvignon varietals. There were about 40 winemakers present and the wines were broken up into seven flights. In all we tried 52 wines, ranging from Chardonnay and Marsanne all the way through to Merlot, Malbec, Petite Verdot and Syrah. This was the first time I have participated in an event like this and it was pretty cool to have my wine tasted by my peers. I have to admit that I was a little nervous; especially when I found out I would have to stand up in front of the group and talk about how I made my Syrah (mine is second from the right in the above photo). But all went well. My wine tasted good and held up nicely to all the other Syrahs. In fact all the wines were pretty good and by the end of it, my teeth and tongue were stained purple. Stagecoach really is a fantastic vineyard and with the dedication of Jan and his crew, they really do grow outstanding grapes. If you want to find out more about Stagecoach, you can visit their website: www.stagecoachvineyard.com

Permits, Permits and More Permits

Lately I have been busy filling out application forms. Every time I finish filling out one form, there is always another one waiting to be completed. However things are progressing nicely. First I got my Business License from the city of Berkeley, next I managed to get my permit to sell alcohol from the Feds and my Sellers Permit from the State. The last one I am waiting on is my license to sell alcohol from the California Alcohol Beverage Commission. This one takes the longest. It took almost two days to fill out all the forms. After submitting them, I then had to put a huge sign in the front window of our house (as seen in the above photo). This was up for 30 days and fortunately none of our neighbors objected. One was even hopeful that he could buy all is liquor from me instead of walking down to the corner store! However, the permit is just for my business office and the wine will have to be stored elsewhere (in a bonded facility - that's another post for the future). Anyway, I should have my final permit in about a month or so, just in time for bottling (early May).