Vineyards, Racks & Barrels

Oscar at Furlong Estates Vineyard

Never let a winemaker tell you there life is glamorous. It’s only Tuesday and I think I have already driven over 400 miles since Saturday and I still haven’t crushed a grape. On Saturday my son Oscar and I visited two of the vineyards I am getting grapes from. St. Mark’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley is looking great and still about 2–3 weeks away until we pick. The vineyard is dry-farmed which means it does not get any irrigation. It was pretty hot up there and Mark (the vineyard owner), Oscar and I walked the vineyard taking grape samples and discussing the upcoming harvest. The vineyard got hit hard with a heavy frost last April and because of that, the crop level is pretty low. I share the vineyard with another winemaker and it looks like I’ll get 2–3 tons of Syrah from it. The bunches are very open (lots of space between the berries) and the grapes are small, so the wine should have a lot of color (due to a higher skin to pulp ratio) with intense flavors. Mark, and his wife Ginny also grow and dry lavender and they were kind enough to give Oscar a few sachets (as well as a turkey feather and a lucky horseshoe from one of their horses).

St. Mark's Vineyard

St. Mark's Vineyard

From there we proceeded up to the Alexander Valley to check on the Furlong Estates Vineyard. With all the heat we had last week (it was 97°F by the time we got there on Saturday), the sugar content of the grapes here really took off. I usually expect to see an increase of around 1° Brix/week. (Brix is a measure of sugar content). But his week the sugar increased by almost 3° Brix. Yikes! These grapes are getting ripe and it they will be the first of the grapes I’ll harvest this year.

Oscar at Furlong Estates Vineyard

Furlong Estates Vineyard

On Sunday I headed down to Livermore to pick up some barrel racks. Racks are what the barrels rest on in the winery and they allow you to move the barrels around with a forklift and also to stack them up to six high. New racks cost around $90, so good fortune smiled on me when I found these used one’s for a mere $20 each. As you can see, fitting ten of them in the back of my pickup made for quite the load.


Today it was off to Stagecoach Vineyard in Napa in the morning. The grapes there look great but are probably still a few weeks away from being harvested. After that I had to pick up some used oak barrels. I managed to find six of them at a winery in Napa. However, I can only get four of them in the back of my truck at one time (see picture below). So that meant two trips: Napa to Fairfield to unload them, back to Napa and then back to the winery in Fairfield.



Tomorrow is a bit of a breather and then the Furlong Estates Vineyard grapes will be picked on Thursday. Finally a chance to make some wine (did I mention I have to pick up some more barrels on Friday!)

On another note, there was a very interesting interview on Fresh Air yesterday with Thomas Friedman whose new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, is about the need for a green revolution. I’ll definitely be putting it on my fall reading list. Click here to listen to the interview.

Only One Week To Crush!

Things are moving along at lightning speed this year. With all the warm weather we are having and a lighter crop on most of the vineyards, the grapes are definitely ripening faster. I visited Stagecoach Vineyard on Monday and was expecting to see under ripe grapes. What a surprise I had when I got out of my car and started walking the vineyard (see pictures). The crop is a lot less this year (around 3 tons compared to 4.5 tons last year) and the grapes are already at 22.5° Brix! I usually pick them at around 25° Brix and this time of year they are normally only at around 18° Brix. So what doe this mean? Normally the sugar content increases by around 1° Brix per week. So, instead of harvesting in late October (like the last two years), I’ll probably be picking them in about 3 weeks. Not really a problem as the grapes look fantastic with a lot of color and flavor plus the lighter crop will lead to a richer, more concentrated wine. All up, it should be a great vintage this year. I’ll be heading back up to Furlong Vineyard in the Alexander Valley and St. Mark’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley on Saturday and will probably start harvesting next week. It looks like crush is her and all I can say is: “Bring it on!”

Furlong Estates Vineyard Visit

Last Saturday, I took a trip up to Furlong Estates Vineyard. It was a typical summer day for Sonoma County with a layer of marine fog hanging over the vineyard. However, by the time I finished walking the Syrah block, the fog had burned off and the sun was shining down on the grapes. Furlong Estates is a lovely hillside vineyard. The Syrah block, starts on the base of the hill and rapidly ascends up the side of the slope. When I am sampling grapes, I find it necessary to walk the block so that I can get a good sense of how the vineyard is progressing. What that means is that I was constantly walking up and down the side of the hill, which gave me a good morning’s work out. As for the grapes, they are looking great. They are still at least two weeks away from being harvested. With the long range forecast being for nice sunny days and cool nights the sugar levels will continue to rise and the flavor will continue to develop nicely.

Harvest 2008 Is Just Around The Corner

Well, after being away for six weeks, I am now just getting back up to speed on how my grapes are doing and am planning to do some vineyard visits over the next couple of weeks. Although there was a late frost in April and some showers and high winds during bloom (when the grape buds start to flower), the summer has been pretty perfect with temperatures in the 80’s helping the grapes to ripen evenly. The Napa Valley Grapegrowers held a press conference yesterday and they are predicting “an exceptional vintage of pristine grapes with lower than average yields in a year marked by extreme growing conditions.” (Click hear to read their full press release) Sounds pretty impressive! I’m sure some of it is marketing hype, but I’m not one to complain. Great grapes make great wine and from what I have already seen, I have to agree that 2008 has the potential to be an excellent vintage. You’ll just have to stay tuned to see how it evolves over the next few months.

I expect my grapes from Furlong Estates Vineyard in the Alexander Valley to be ready for harvest probably around the first week in September whereas the grapes from Stagecoach Vineyard in Napa and St. Mark’s Vineyard in the Russian River Valley probably wont ripen until sometime in mid to late October. I’ll post an update with pictures sometime in the next few weeks.

So, let’s all raise a glass to the start of Harvest 2008.

On another note, my sister Kylie has started blogging for SBS - a multicultural broadcasting service in Australia. If you want to read her post on BritDoc 2008 (a conference on documentary films) then follow this link.

The Wine Is In The Bottle!

Yesterday was a momentous day for me. After years of planning and waiting, I bottled my first vintage. Woohoo! We bottled 300 cases of the 2006 Eight Arms Syrah, Stagecoach Vineyard, Napa Valley. That’s 3,600 bottles! The mobile bottling unit arrived at the winery at around 7 o'clock in the morning, we started bottling at 8:00 am and were completed by around 1:30. There were nine of us there and the process is pretty simple. Dump the empty bottles out of their boxes, sparge with Nitrogen to get any dust out of the bottles and then place them on the filler. Next the corks are placed into the bottle under a vacuum, the capsules are then attached, the bottles are labeled and then placed back in their boxes ready to be sold. Well, not quite. They will need 4–5 months of bottle aging so that they can recover from bottle shock (what happens to wine when it is bottled – the components tend to fall apart from the harshness of the bottling, but then slowly come back together). Below are some pictures of the bottling.

Empty cases of bottles with the mobile bottling unit in the background

The wine going into the bottles

Labels waiting to go onto the bottles

A finished bottle coming of the line

Cases stacked and ready to go!

The Eight Arms 2006 Syrah Labels Are Printing

Last Thursday I went up to Petaluma to press check my labels. As you can see from the pictures, the proofs looked great. Once I had approved them, the printing began. It’s hard to believe that it only took them 45 minutes to print 4,000 labels! This week they will foil stamp and die-cut the labels and they will be ready by the end of the week. What perfect timing because I am filtering the wine on Friday so that it can be bottled on Monday! If you are wondering what the actual label looks like, then stay tuned, as I’ll post pictures of them later in the week.

3,600 Bottles and 4,000 Corks

It looks like I will be bottling my 2006 Syrah in a couple of weeks and everything is finally coming together. My bottles are here and ready to be filled. Seeing the six palettes of them stacked in the corner of the winery is finally making the whole idea of having wine to sell very real (see photo above). I also received my corks and as you can see from the picture they are very cool looking. The octopus printed on the cork looks fantastic and I think they will be a great addition to the final bottle of wine. A nice little surprise when you pull the cork!




The next step will be printing the labels. I can’t print until I get approval from the Feds, but I’m hoping to hear from them today. If all goes well I will be printing labels on Thursday and then bottling on the 23rd of this month.