I was talking today with Tim Holdener of Macchia Wines here in Lodi and he asked me if I’d been out to see the Soucie Zin vineyard yet. Of course not…. I’ve been busy. I asked a stupid question, “How long until bloom? Tim looked at me funny and said that the vines already have set fruit and berry development is well along.

Well, jeez, I felt stupid. Been so busy that I’ve paid NO attention whatsoever to what time of year it is. I’m still thinking it’s late March. Yikes - harvest is less than four months away!!!!

Zinfest was a hoot for sure. In case you missed it, Zinfest was held this past Saturday.

It is Lodi’s big annual wine tasting event with music, art, food, and almost every Lodi area winery in attendance pouring their stuff. We were the first winery booth after peeps entered the main gate, so we were swamped. We were pouring our ‘05 Old Vine Zinfandel and the ‘05 Zinlady - couldn’t pour our other stuff because it’s not Lodi appelation.

We had a lot of positive feedback from the crowd and many people told us that they thought our Zin was the best they had that day. In fact, someone stole the bottle from our display. Didn’t know what to think of that, but evidently we’ve got a new fan.

Anyway, a big fun day and we want to say thanks to everyone who stopped and sampled our wine. We had tremendous positive response and that’s always gratifying!

I’m finally almost finished with racking the ‘06 wines. At least this time.

I’ll probably rack everything at least twice more before bottling. Six barrels to go. It seems to be taking forever but that’s primarily due to our space limitations. Setting up equipment, getting to the barrels I want to rack, then cleaning up takes more time than it should. The actual transfer time to do six barrels - pump out, wash, pump in, takes about an hour, but phone calls, the odd visitor here and there (not odd visitors, just odd as in random) or spending time looking for something I need takes as much time as racking six barrels.

Cleaning up takes at least an hour and a half, depending on how much stuff I have to fork in and out of the building.