The Shi-ite Hits the Fan Tomorrow

Tomorrow Crush ‘07 begins in earnest for us. Seven tons of Zinfandel on 10/4, six tons of Petite Sirah on 10/5, two tons of Zin on 10/6 are coming in. An assorted seven tons of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petite Verdot destined for our 2007 ‘Singularity’ bottling will be coming in sometime the week of 10/8. Not much for bigger wineries, but it’s a lot for m2.

Right now I’ve got 1.5 tons of Petite Sirah from a vineyard near Calistoga fermenting away, along with a pain-in-the-tookus, half-ton of Merlot that I’m making for a custom-crush client.

The early-pick Zin is pressed, and the sluggish fermentation is still sluggish, but still working. The flavor, however, is tremendously wonderful and the color is a beautiful deep red; quite different than the purple-red I’m used to from Soucie’s fruit, but rich and strong anyway.

Our 2007 Clone Six harvest/crush is in doubt right now. Yields from Napa look to be 30% to 40% below whatever ‘normal’ is, and since we’re not under contract with this source of fruit, availability of our expected tonnage is a question yet to be answered.

Hmmm…. what else to report? Well, after we fill the orders for vino from our Connecticut distributor and The Wine Garage, along with the ‘Trio’ that’s going to Jamaica, we’re nearly SOLD OUT of our 2005 vintage. We’re not bottling the 2006 stuff until March of ‘08 so we’re holding back about 35 cases each of ‘Trio’, ‘Duality’ and our ‘Row 23′ Petite Sirah. We want to have something to sell during our massively huge upcoming special events - ‘Chinapainting’, who’s performing on October 21, “The First Sip” on November 10 and 11, and the “Wine and Chocolate Weekend” coming up in February.

Check out the details on that stuff on the events page.

More later.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Winemaking, Winery Events, Public Tasting Events, Day To Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.