Our Zinfandel vineyard is grown as ‘head-trained’ or self-supporting vines. Spacing is 8′ by 8′. On these vines there are generally 20 to 25 ‘arms’ with, ideally, two fruit-bearing shoots per arm with one cluster of grapes per shoot.

On trellised vines (using wires for support) you have two, sometimes four, ‘cordons’ or arms with 6 to 8 nodes per cordon and two fruit-bearing shoots per node with one cluster of grapes per shoot.

We were seeing four to five fruit bearing shoots per arm with four to five clsuters per shoot. Crazy heavy. It’s kinda hard to see in the first picture, but you’re looking at about 10 clusters when you should be seeing two or three. The immature clusters were already huge, as long as my hand - 8.5 inches. The primary cluster and the ‘wing’ as Kevin calls it, were almost the same size and the shoulders were already as big as clusters of Clone Six Cabernet. There was a considerable amount of shatter but when the grapes start to mature and fill in the shatter will aid in opening up the clusters

Kevin said he hasn’t seen this much fruit on the vines for 15 years. There’s no real way to explain why the crop load is so heavy this year. Could be lack of spring rain, could be a “light” crop last year…. no single reason explains it, but there are way too many grapes on the vines for a quality harvest.

Four to five tons to the acre is optimal production for our block of Zinfandel. More than that and the grapes don’t develop their best flavors and less than that doesn’t make much difference between “wow” flavors and “wow” flavors in the finished wine.

The fix to excess crop loads is easy but can get expensive. Essentially you just send the crews through the vineyard and reduce the crop by cutting out the excess fruit.

How is the vintage of 2008 looking? Too early to tell in Lodi. The weather has been good, but temperatures are trending cooler than ‘normal.’ Our Foothills sources suffered minor frost damage this past spring. Napa is looking at a very light year due to frost damage and I’ve heard that some people are already writing off ‘08 Napa as a “bad” year. That’s crazy talk at this point. Much depends on the weather between now and September/October.

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!

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.

Drywall is up, tape and mud finished. Painting soon. The floor in the tasting room is going to be an acid wash/varnish to look like aged leather. Diana is working with a friend of hers who does faux painting and is designing something nice for the walls in a sophisticated faux-painting scheme to match the floor. Tile in the bathroom is a dark, mottled stone look. The grates for the floor drain are in, and we’re setting the sand/oil trap on Wednesday, pouring final concrete on Thursday. We’re putting in a big stainless steel sink and I’m revamping the lab area. It’s gonna be great to have this finished and working in the winery will be so much easier. Speaking of…

Wine Update …

First racking of the ‘07 reds is almost finished. We’re behind on this, Steve over at Vino Con Brio is finishing up second racking on their stuff. The ’07s are off to a good start and my earlier pessimism is dissipating. Chris reminded me the other day that I’m always pessimistic about the new wines this time of year …

As noted in earlier blogging we ordered way too many barrels this past fall - there are several still sitting empty and unused. I don’t feel so bad about it now though. The 2008 price list from Seguin Moreau just arrived and hoo, boy… as I expected prices on American barrels are up about 10% - Frenchy barrels range from $925 to $1,170 at today’s exchange rate. Those six empty Francois Ferre barrels that we didn’t use but paid for are looking like a bargain!

Wine Availability Update ….

For months Chris and Diana have been talking with several wine brokering companies to represent m2 in California. We’ve been cautious about hiring/using their services/paying someone to sell our wine for us; we’re new and small and don’t have THAT much wine to get into broad distribution but do need to get more m2 in the hands of the people who want it. Now, however, a wine brokerage firm in Napa named 5 & I Wine will be representing m2 across most of California, from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, San Francisco to Reno.

Up until now C & D (Chris and Diana) have been primarily responsible for most of our outside accounts - meaning restaurants and retailers who carry our wines. I’m great at cold-calling on places and introducing them to m2, but am lousy at the follow-up required (read that as closing the sale.) Chris is good at networking and he knows a lot of people in the retail wine business. Diana’s really good at it the follow-up thing- but it takes time and time is something we’re always short of.

Short version of a long thought process here … we’re excited that 5 & I Wine is representing us. Look for m2 soon at your favorite wine shop, and if you don’t find it there, tell them to call 5 & I Wine.

Event Update…

May 18 is the date for our release party and fourth anniversary of the creation of m2. Capitol Cellars in Roseville is hosting a release party for m2 at their shop on May 31.

The concrete for the trench drain was poured yesterday, we’ll be able to drive on it Saturday. We’ve passed inspections on plumbing, electrical, framing, insulation, and a very up-close flea check…. Ok, I got no idea what that means…….

 The worker guys are finishing up the drywall installation even as I type and if everything goes well we’ll be DONE next week. The fancy frenchy-style door between tasting room and winery is six weeks away, but who gives a fooey at this point, the rest is almost done.

We’re doing a fancy aged-leather acid wash floor finish in the tasting room and some really nice tile in the bathroom. One of these days we’ll be building a permanent tasting bar to replace the wine barrels and boards system we’ve used until now.

On the wine side… I took a case and a half of Zinfandel up to the Lodi Wine Country Visitor Center on Wednesday. They sold out of it in less than 24 hours and I delivered three more cases today. The ‘06 Soucie Zin isn’t officially released yet at the winery, but the austute reader can purchase said wine at the visitor center, or at the winery if you ask nicely. This Zin is probably the most eagerly awaited wine in the short, yet fabulous, history of m2. I think it’s better than the ‘04, but others disagree. I like the ‘06 over the ‘04 because the aforementioned Zin is lower in alcohol, yet as rich and fruity as the ‘04. Others disagree, primarily due to their love of ethanol and jam.

We’re shipping our first Cellar Dweller wine club shipment in almost a year next week. It will include the ‘06 Trio and Petite Sirah. The ‘06 Trio is the wine I was trying to make when we started this whole thing back in 1999. I think the Trio is all that it should be and all that I wanted it to be back in ‘99… just took us seven years to get it done.

Come see the new stuff at m2 and put your signature on the big white wall in the new half of the winery……!!!!

Spring seems to have arrived in NoCal. Not much is happening in the vineyards yet in terms of bud swelling or bud break, but the sap is rising in the vines and everyone who hasn’t pruned yet is scrambling to do so. We’re a little more than six months away from harvest time; it’s time to think about our fall plans. And it’s time to rack the ‘07 wines, test chemistry and SO2 levels, and get everything squared away in the cellar. I know that malolactic fermentation has completed in some wines, but not in others. The warmer days has accelerated MLF, you can hear the light fizz of carbon dioxide being released when you listen to the barrels. 

We’ve finally been able to expand our winery, doubling our square footage from 1,800 to 3,600. The existing winery space will be used for barrel storage, finished case good storage and tasting room only. The new half of the winery is dedicated to storage of equipment for now, and we’ll be using both sides for winemaking in the fall. 

As I mentioned earlier we’ve finally started construction of our final winery improvements - drainage, tasting room, and bathroom. This final phase is long overdue and when finished will make working in the winery much easier, especially the drainage. The place is a disgusting mess right now though, concrete dust all over, giant holes in the floor, noise and hammering all the time. BUT once work is done I’ll be able to take a hose to the entire place and wash down everything and watch the water flow into the floor drains!

Mike Dunne, wine writer for The Sacramento Bee newspaper wrote a very nice article about m2 in the January 23, 2008 edition of the newspaper. Here’s the link to the article. Check it out.

That was Saturday, March 1. On the following Monday we started construction on the last phase of our winery improvements - bathroom, ‘formal’ tasting room, additional plumbing, electrical and drainage. We’ve been putting this off for as long as we could due to the expense and mess but couldn’t postpone any longer. The winery is now a freakin’ mess. There is a 6′ x 7′ x 7′ pit in the middle of the floor, future home of a sand/oil trap and other cuts in the concrete for the floor drain system and the bathroom plumbing. A big freakin’ mess and I cannot wait to get this over with.

We are finalizing a deal to export almost 100 cases of wine to Brazil and are essentially sold out of 2005 Duality and Trio.

We’ll be releasing the 2006 wines in May. Come see us and maybe get a sneak-peek at the ‘06 wines.

What’s new? Lots of stuff and more to come.

First, we’re about five weeks away from our bottling date on March 1. The logistics of it all are coming together fairly well. Corks ordered. Art files for labels at the printer, bottles set for delivery on February 28. We’ll be bottling about 1900 cases of wine, doubling our production size from last year. For better or worse we’ll be turning bottling day into a special winery event, so come on out to the winery and get a look at this very satisfying aspect of the wine bidness.

Chris and I have pretty much figured out our blends for Trio and Duality, and the blend for our new artist series Zinfandel. This has been an exciting project for me; the label features a commissioned artwork by Tahoe area artist Reds Regan and the wine - “Zinfandel de l’Artiste” - is a blend of our best barrels of Zin from Soucie Vineyard and Todd Maley’s vineyard on Ray Road in Lodi.

Coming up on February 9 & 10 is the Lodi Wine Country Wine and Chocolate Weekend. All participating Lodi wineries will be featuring some sort of chocolate-themed activity. We’ll be grilling various meats with chocolate grilling spices. Yep, chocolate grilling spices. Good stuff too. We’re also featuring cookies from Kelli’s Cookies of Sacramento.

On the winemaking side of things, it’s been very cold and damp in the winery lately. Everything is in a kind of suspended state, no pop pop, fizz fizz of active malolactic fermentation because of the temps. Working in the winery is no fun when the weather’s like this.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the photo album on the web site. Right now there are three sets of photos, with more to come. Did you know that there are almost 20 versions of the song “Red, Red Wine” out there? Barry Manilow wrote it. His version is truly awful. For some reason the song is popular as a Reggae tune or with a lot of Carribean influence. I like UB40’s version the best but intend to put a different version as background music with each set of photos.

Among the many things I plan to do better in 2008 is keeping the blog updated more often. We’ll see how I do….

BTW, I mistakenly drank one of my only two 2005 m2 OVZ’s, while I have 8-9 of the 04’s left (I think I bought 2-3 cases of the 04). Hint, hint…if ya got anymore of the 05’s. The 05 was actually the wine that kicked the Turley’s ass a few weeks ago…

Dave

and

Yes, the 05 kicked a 2002 Turley Dry Creek/Grist Zin (rated 88-89 pts by both WS and Parker), a unanimous smackdown as judged by 6-10 people at a dinner back in October. I didn’t know I had mistakenly grabbed the 05 until a couple of weeks later.

 A lot has been happening and well worth talking about, yet I still have no time right now. So… coming soon…

1. Harvest recap

2. Public events, past and future update

3. General angst

4. Barrel discussion regarding the new stuff purchased for ‘07 and wines in said barrels

5. Upcoming bottling slated for March 1 including good and bad issues involving labels, bottles, the TTB, a scintilatting discussion about corks AND a couple new wines coming from m2 …

Stay tuned….