The fabulous life of owning your own winery allows for many hours of free time, unlike those of you with “real” jobs. Ha! Just a damn joke, ok? I’ve got free time, but no money to spend … So, I was watching TV Land this morning and ‘I Love Lucy’ comes on and it’s that damnable episode where she stomps grapes with her feet. I have no idea why, I can’t stand the episode, so I’ve no idea what the plot is.

I hate this episode, it is just so trite and awful. Yeah, yeah, it’s supposed to be funny. Well, bite me. Because of that one episode, the one and only thing that most people know about winemaking is that you have to stomp the grapes with your feet. NO YOU DON’T! There are no feet involved at any time in making wine in a commercial winery in these supposedly modern times, unless you’re some sort of dingbat winemaker. Or are doing it as a marketing stunt, aka Rick Hutchinson at Amphora in Dry Creek, or Dave Dart of d’Art Wines in Lodi. Ok, both of those guys could fall into either category.

The next person that asks me “Do you stomp on ‘em with your feet? hahahaha” is gonna get smacked.

Thanyouverymush.

 Next time on I Hate Wine Cliches … “Rich man buys land, builds winery …”

So, for some reason we’re planning on crushing 40 tons of grapes this fall. See the June 14 entry for how much must, wine, and finished cases that 40 tons will create.

After lots of back and forth we’ve decided on 38 new barrels from Francois Ferre, Canton Cooperage, Seguin Moreau, Demptos and Nadalie.

We’re figuring on ending up with around 100 barrels of new wine, with 38% of those barrels new it seems like almost too much new oak, but we’ll not be using it equally across all varietals. The Clone Six Cab will get almost 100% new Francois Ferre, Lani’s Vineyard Syrah and Pratt Cabernet will get about 25% new Demptos 50/50 hybrid barrels (50% French, 50% American). Different lots of Soucie Old Vine Zin and Maley Zin will get a highly secret combination of Canton, Demtptos and Seguin Moreau American oak. The Petite Sirah will see about 35% of new oak from Seguin Moreau and Canton. I will say that we like what Seguin Moreau U-Stave barrels do with the Petite Sirah.

Why this combo? As John Belushi said in ‘Animal House’, “Why not?”

Actually there’s a method to the madness and a strategy that picks up from previous vintages and carries us into future ones. It’s not just random whimsy as to what barrels we use for which wine.

Orders have been placed and delivery is set for mid-September for most of this stuff. I’m feeling pretty good about being ready for crush this year. We don’t have the stress of last year - we were pushing hard this time last year to get the new winery ready in time. I was dreading crush last year, this year I’m rarin’ to go!

Overall so far in 2007 the growing season has been near perfect, except for the lack of normal spring rainfall. Temperatures have been spot on with ‘normal’ - only three days or so above 100 in Lodi, and only a few days in the high 90s in Napa. If the temperatures stay like this I’m expecting 2007 to be a very good year for wine grapes. 

We’re adding another top Lodi Zin vineyard to our fruit sources for 2007 - Maley Vineyards, located at Woodbridge and Ray Road. Todd Maley is another 3rd generation Lodi grower and has some tragically good Zinfandel. I was out looking at our Zin today - talking to Kevin Soucie and Todd Maley about the grapes.

Kevin’s vines are 91 years old this year; the block we’re using from Maley Vineyards are about 40 years old. Kevin irrigated to make up for the lack of spring rains and has good fruit set and normal sized clusters. The Zin from Todd has quite a bit of “shot” berry and very small berries. Todd didn’t irrigate, which can account for the smaller berry size.

The shot berry is another thing; Maybe something to do with the age of the vines can account for the shot berry?? I’ve heard that a lot of Lodi vineyards, regardless of the variety, have it. (Shot berry is when the clusters don’t set fruit properly. The berries are the size of buckshot and fail to develop.) Kevin doesn’t have a lot of it, Todd does.

Veraision (when the grapes turn from green to purple) is about a week behind normal, indicating a harvest that’s right on schedule to a week or two late.

Overall 2007 so far in Lodi is looking great. I’ll be talking to our other growers next week and will report on what’s up with those vineyards soon.

I spent a couple hours Thursday and Friday topping barrels. As wine ages in the barrels it slowly evaporates through the staves and heads of the barrel. This is part of the normal aging process and is what makes new wine evolve from brash fruit and fresh alcohol into a ‘finished’ wine.

I had quite a bit more loss than expected this month - I can only assume that it’s because the outside temperature has reached the high 90s and low 100s and the air conditioner is running 12 hours or more a day. It’s not a detriment to the wine at all, as long as I keep up with our topping regime. We know from errors made by others that not topping religiously can ruin great wine very fast.

We’ve got a great racking system now. We store our topping wine in stainless steel kegs and have a elaborate piece of stainless stell tubing and check valves to pull wine from the keg. An inert gas (argon in our case) is hooked up to the gas inlet valve, a hose with a pistol grip valve is hooked to the wine outlet. Argon goes in, wine comes out. The keg can be left with a pressuried argon atmosphere for weeks without harming the wine in the partially full container. Very easy to top barrels.

To cut down on topping losses we would ideally refrigerate the winery rather than use air conditioning, but we can’t afford refrigeration! Refrigeration would have cost us about $40K for our space vs. the $10K the AC cost to install. AC dries the air, and increases the evaporation rate of the wine in the barrels. Life is full of little trade-offs.