Why Is It Still So Hot?
It’s really miserable work doing the mundane winery stuff, like washing barrels, cleaning up the crusher or the press, or sweeping out crud from the cellar when it’s 90 degrees and the sun is shining. Ted says I’ll be complaining about the cold and the rain soon, so shut up about the heat and the sun … but I doubt it. Our problem is that our crush area has no shade in the afternoons, and that’s when the work tends to get done because no one wants to show up at dawn to do winery stuff.
The current situation with the mortgage crisis and stock market fluctuations is, well, just weird. I can’t tell if it’s affecting sales of our wines. You customer guys are still coming in and enjoying the wines and having a good time with us, and we really appreciate the support.
We’re somewhere near about half done with our expected crush/tonnage/harvest for ‘08. 12 tons of Zinfandel are crushed, fermented, pressed and some of it’s already in barrel. Half of our Syrah is in barrel, the other half is still fermenting and awaiting the press. The Cab for the ‘08 Trio is fermenting nicely. The Grenache for the ‘08 (new) Rhone blend is pressed. The Mourvedre still to be harvested as well as our Row 23 Petite Sirah.
I’m no expert (lots of people will agree with that statement) but from what I’ve seen and heard overall the grape harvest across California is very light this year, but quality is pretty darn good. It’s just a matter of time before someone declares ‘08 as “the best vintage ever.”
Here’s some good news, for us at least. We’ve sold out of our 2006 Soucie Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel. We had 300 cases when we bottled last March and four months after official release, it’s gone. If you live in the Tampa, Florida, area you’re in luck if you’re looking for some because our distributor there has several cases available through a bunch of retail shops and restaurants in the area. We’ll be previewing the 2007 Soucie Zin during the upcoming Lodi “First Sip” weekend on November 8 and 9.
We’ll also be releasing the 2007 ‘Zinlady’ sweet Zinfandel on November 8 and 9. It’s a nicely sweet little red that is really popular, and I think this version is going to be pretty good.