Eight Tons Fermented and One Octopus

Checking the level of sugars during fermentation

It looks like this will be the last week of crush. After two plus months and eight tons of grapes, things are starting to wind down. How appropriate that Eight Arms crushed eight tons of grapes this year! Stagecoach is almost finished fermenting. In fact, tomorrow I’ll press it and let it complete it’s fermentation in the barrel. This helps to better integrate the oak and leads to a more balanced wine. So, it’s always nice to come to the end of harvest and to have successfully fermented all of my grapes into wine, but it’s also sad, because now I have to wait another 10 months until harvest rolls round again.

This is a big weekend for me. The release party for my first vintage is on Sunday and I think it’s going to be huge! So far it looks like there will be 70–100 people attending. Plus I managed to get some good press for the event. Today it was listed in Daily Candy’s Weekend Guide. Not a small feat. I spoke to them yesterday and asked how many people get the email. The woman I spoke to said she didn’t know the exact numbers but estimated it to be in the tens of thousands. Yikes! This tasting could get big really quickly. We’ll just have to wait and see. It was also mentioned in Tablehopper's weekly email (scroll way down near the bottom) and SFist had a post about it today. In fact, if you are interested in trying to win a bottle of wine, then check out the post, write a Haiku and submit it before 3 pm tomorrow (check out the comments section of the post to see some of the submitted Haikus).

As for the one Octopus, I was at Riva Cucina today working out the final details of the party. They have a wonderful menu of appetizers planned and to top if all of, it wouldn’t be an Eight Arms event if we didn’t serve Octopus. So Chef Massi showed me the first of the Octopuses he is preparing and it was this wonderfully huge red Octopus that filled an entire dinner plate. Yum! (sorry, didn’t have my camera with me, so no pictures!)