I dragged all the empty barrels out of the cellar room this week. (pic on left) We’ve got 62 empties right now, most of which had the ‘06 wines in them. Every barrel got a wash, inside and out, and gassed again with sulfer dioxide. As I’ve said before we’ve also got 12 new barrels that went unused last fall that we’ll use this year. We beat a pretty big price increase due to the value of the dollar vs. the euro too.

We had a huge ‘ZinFest’ Saturday (May 17) and a gigantic crowd at our release event the next day and we want to say thanks to everyone who turned out and had fun and tasted wine and listened to “The Detours” rock the house. Too bad it was so blazing hot; everyone complains about it, but no one ever does anything about the weather.

Other stuff: I’ve also been working on some behind the scene changes with the m2 web site, nothing you’ll ever notice, but hey, it’s taken a lot of time. Also, you can now join our mailing list via the web site. Right now the only place to do so is on the home page, but I’m going to be adding the code/form to other pages. The wine order page has also been updated with all the new ‘06 and ‘07 wines.

We’re also busting butt to get the labels for the 2007 Viognier and the 2006 Artist Series Zinfandel printed. We didn’t have the artwork finished in time for our bottling on March 1 and since it wasn’t a priority we’ve kept putting it off until now, after it’s way too late and everybody wants the wine.

We’ve got a lot of events planned for the summer and fan so keep an eye on the website and the events calendar!

Spring has sprung and summer is here. Significant frost hit the vineyards in NoCal a while back. Our Lodi Zin vineyard had no damage, our Fair Play Cab vineyard had minimal damage, our Napa Cab sources are suffering however. Predictions are that Napa vineyards might be down to 25% or so of last year’s crop. Hide and watch….

Lodi’s ZinFest was this past Saturday (May 17) and our booth at Lodi Lake was slammed with people. Thanks to everyone who stopped and tried the ‘06 Soucie Vineyard Zinfandel. We got a lot of “Your wine was the best all day” comments, some even from sober people!

Our new wines are officially out and I think overall the ’06s are the best wines we’ve made, but are very young tasting still. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but in my opinion the Zin, Viognier and Trio are the best right now. That will change as all the wines spend time in bottle but those three are not to be missed right now. We’ve got some ‘05 Cab, Petite and Duality in inventory though - and these wines are drinking beautifully right now, which leads me to be convinced all our wines benefit from at least a year in the bottle to show their true potential.

We’ve got a lot of events at the winery planned for the summer - June 14 is the official release date for our ‘Artist Series’ Lodi Zin. Check the events page of the web site for more events.