Newsletter and thoughts from Kruse Winery

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December 19th

We Here at the Thomas Kruse Winery Extend Our Sincere Wishes for You All to Have Very Happy Holidays!

It seems that this time of year all there is time for is to work, sleep, eat, and shop. Here's a suggestion that will simplify things
and make it all go much better: Take a Break!

Treat yourself to a visit to the winery and select some handcrafted, estate bottled wine to serve at your holiday table or to give as gifts. Come and visit.

We will be open from Noon until 5 p.m. every day from now until Christmas, except Monday the 19th.

We are offering Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Late Harvest Zinfandel. These are all 100% from Claire's Field. The honesty and goodness of our wines come from the grapes you helped to harvest.

Holiday Sampler Case:
3 Chardonnay (Reg. $36)
3 Merlot (Reg. $36)
3 Cabernet (Reg. $36)
2 Late Harvest Zinfandel (Reg. $40)
1 Champagne (Reg. $20)

Regular Price: $168
Sampler Price (While They Last):
$80 plus tax

Or, make up your own mixed case and receive our regular, generous discounts.

Karen, Millie, and I wish you all a very wonderful holiday season.

Stay tuned for word about our next BYOB sometime in early January.
Tom Kruse

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August 20th

Friends,

We're hoping to see you at this event.

Now, as I approach this harvest, I find myself thankful for this summer - it's beautiful - and, for the first time, wishing the days were a lot warmer. Ripening depends on the cumulative heat during the growing season and this year has been on the cool side.

Maybe (but I hope not) our Cabernet will be ripe in November. Last year, the Cabernet harvest was on October 29th.

I have also been giving a good deal of thought to our tiny production of Sparkling Wine, a la methode Champenoise. I'm planning on having at least four hundred bottles ready for the Holidays.

This may sound goofy, but the other day I was at a store browsing through the CDs. I bought two sets, each containing three disks. One was Rock and Roll of the fifties and the other was Doo Wop music of the same era. I couldn't wait to get them home and I put them on the CD player in the winery. It seems that for almost all of them, I knew what the song was after only listening to the first few bars. How does that imprint itself in one's memory?

I like the music of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Most of it, anyway. Now, it seems that I can't find a radio station that I like.

We used to have KFAT here in Gilroy, which was good. On many Sunday evenings, I would call the station and ask them to play "El Paso," by Marty Robbins. The D.J. would say, "This one's for Tom, our favorite winemaker." Then on Monday, I would drop by the station with a bottle of wine. A lovely arrangement.

I started thinking about how music makes such a profound impression on people, especially, it seems, when we're young. Music is also generationally exclusive, it seems. Young people today like music that has little appeal to me.


I began thinking of how folks would sing, whistle, or hum a tune or melody that was popular at the time. Now I see youngsters with electronic devices in their ears and moving to a rhythm that can't be heard. It has a beat and it may even have words, but is it melodic?


Of course, it can be said that there are close to an infinite number of permutations with the notes and chords and even the limitation of the four-four beat. I am the first to agree, but how many of these possible combinations will have a melody and lyrics that people will like?

Personally, I think we're out of tunes.

Tom

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June 22nd

Dear Friends,

On the 25th, we will have a day where you can bring your own clean bottles and fill them up with our savory red table wine that we call Gilroy Red. If you prefer, we will do the filling and corking while you partake of the ambience and enjoy the food, wine tasting, and live music.

If you are bringing bottles, make sure they are clean and you have removed the foil from the top. If you need bottles from us, they are available, new, for $8.00 a case.

I have seen our label go over a Two Buck Chuck label and also over a label on a $150 bottle of French Burgundy. We aren't prejudiced.

Our spring has been unusually cool and, as a result, the grapes are not as far along as they would be in a more regular year. This forebodes a later harvest unless we have an abnormally hot rest of the summer.

Ripening is a function of the cumulative heat in a growing season. Our Chardonnay is first to ripen, followed by the Merlot, then the Zinfandel, and, lastly, our Cabernet.

*If you can tell me what is different about Zinfandel grapes - that is, the actual berry - you will be able to get one case of Gilroy Red for $48 (with your own bottles) instead of $60. Google it. I never thought I'd say that, so I'll say it again. Google it. Hint (answer) - apical scar on grape opposite the pedicil.

I call the apical scar on a Zinfandel grape the "belly button." It's the only grape that has this and if you see a cluster of grapes, each with the scar, they can only be Zinfandel.

About our '08 Late Harvest Zin: We picked those at 31 percent sugar. I'm sure when I read the refractometer - which is an optical instrument that measures the refraction of light and reflects it on a prism that has been calibrated to measure the percentage of sugar in solution by weight - that it probably read 27% or 28% sugar.

The thing with Zin is that the clusters ripen unevenly and there are raisins which don't dissolve their sugar right away - only later after they have sat in the fermenter for a few days. So with Zin, you can almost always expect the sugar to be higher than your initial reading.

Well, I must have had way more raisins than I anticipated and I "reconstrue" that the sugar must have been 31 or 32% for the alcohol to be 17.2% with a residual sugar of 1%.

Pretty good! It's the first wine I have made in 48 years of winemaking that I am advising people to decant first before drinking it so the aeration can "cool" it down a little.

Thanks for reading this.

Tom

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April 2011

Our Barrel Class Day was a Great Deal of Fun

We had eleven participants on Saturday, April 9th. We chose a barrel to shave and toast and we had the most interactive class on cooperage.

I told them that we would put the barrel together and it wouldn't leak - except it did. Then, several (all) class members told me that they thought I put the chime hoops on the wrong ends. So, we took them off, removed the head once again, put some more gate tallow on the croze that was seeping, and put it back together.

- Voila! -

It didn't leak. [If you pronounce "voila" the French way, it sounds like "wah-lah!" When we were in France and people asked where we were from, I would tell them "Walla Walla, Washington," except I pronounced it "Voila! Voila!"]

Everyone who took the class was smarter than me and we all learned a lot.

BRRRRRRRRRRR!

On the morning of the barrel class, April 9th, I woke up at 6:00 am because I always get nervous before a class and wake up early, wondering if I thought of everything. I looked outside and what I could see said there was a frost. Oh man! I went outside and looked at the min/max thermometer on the side of the house and it read 30 degrees!

This was very scary because we have already had bud break and the leaves are showing on most of the vines. I said my prayers and was embarrassed because I don't believe in prayers of supplication. God is busy enough with everything else she has to worry about. Anyway, as the day wore on, it became apparent that we suffered no frost damage to the vines. We did, however, get a tinge of frost on the new Franquette walnut leaves. I am simply astounded that we got through this, so far, without damage.


Budbreak

The nominal growing season for grape vines is April 1st to November 1st. This year, we seemed to be right on time with our buds breaking almost on the 1st of April. We actually prune the Chardonnay two times to delay budbreak. It still opens first. From April 1st on to November 1st, the average of the high and low temperatures is recorded. Since grape shoot tip growth doesn't occur below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the number 50 is subtracted from the average each day.

Let's say that April 1st had a high of 70 and a low of 40, so the average was 55. Subtract 50 from that and you get 5 day degrees. Every day is recorded until November 1st and the day degrees are totaled up. The result is the number of day degrees for the growing season.

Santa Clara County is remarkable! We have between 2500 and 3000 day degrees for the growing season. This is Region 2, with all the regions in 500 day degree increments, the coolest being Region 1 with 2000 to 2500 day degrees. Napa has Regions 1 through 4 in its borders - Carneros being a Region 1 and Calistoga being a Region 4. St. Helena is Region 3 (warm).

So, the next time someone says that this wine is from Napa, you should ask where in Napa. Parts of Napa are ill-suited to some varieties, yet the name persists in over-riding concerns about the suitability of variety and the terroir. I am leaving this in small print in case you want to gloss over it.

To Till or Not to Till - That is the Question

Here at Claire's Field, we till. That is to say, we cultivate the ground between the rows and turn under our winter cover crop of annual rye grass.

When you visit next, take a look at the vineyard and look, in particular, at the ground between the rows. It has been intentionally turned over with an implement pulled behind the tractor - the disc (also spelled disk).
The disc is a tool that has two rows of cup shaped blades. The row in front turns the dirt one way and the row in the back throws it back the other way. This is to uproot and turn over any grass or weeds growing in the rows. It also loosens the dirt so as to disrupt the closeness of the fine particles and prevent the upward capillary movement of water.

Water actually defies gravity if it comes into contact with closely structured particulate matter. Just touch the edge of a paper towel onto some water on your kitchen counter. The second contact is made, the water moves up into the towel. It is the same with compacted dirt. Rain compacts the dirt, but when the rain stops, the water uses the same closely formed channels to work its way back up to the surface where it evaporates.

So, we do this as a water conservation measure, not to mention fire prevention. (But I just did - it's like saying "needless to say," and then saying what it was that was needless to say.)

Cultivating a vineyard is more work, but if you do it well, and in conjunction with a cover crop, it is better for the soil. There may be exceptions to this on steep hillsides, in close proximity to creeks, and where rocks really prevent tillage, but here at Claire's Field, tillage is the best practice.


European Grapevine Moth

Perhaps you have heard of this pest by now. It is in the Napa Valley and now a handful of moths have been found down here on the Hecker Pass side of South County.

There is a quarantine of a portion of the South County. The line of the quarantine just misses the five wineries (including ours) on the east side of the valley, but it includes all of the vineyards along Hecker Pass Road, Watsonville Road, Uvas Road, and Redwood Retreat Road.
Of course, everyone is cooperating with the department of agriculture. Here at Claire's Field, they have installed two traps and they are constantly monitoring them for signs of infestation. So far, nothing.

Please be careful. Don't drive your car through people's vineyards and please do not pick grapes and then take them somewhere else.
This moth is very destructive. In the larval stage, they manage to eat and hollow out the grapes.

This is, potentially, really bad for the industry. If you walk through someone's vineyard, please clean your shoes before leaving there. Some kinds of shoes have all kinds of squiggles and holes in the bottom and they pick up stuff and track it all over. I have always wanted to advise people: Please wear sensible shoes.

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January 2011

Dear Friends,

This is the time of the year when we remove over 99% of the last year's growth on a mature vine and get it in shape for the coming growing season.

We have 7,500 vines and each of them may have as many as 50 canes (shoots) from the previous year. Almost all of this growth will be cut off, leaving some buds to make this year's canes and bear the fruit.

This work is the most important thing we do during the life of the vine. It requires care and precision and it determines the health, longevity, and productivity of the plant and, consequently, our livelihood.

We have a all day vineyard class coming up on February 12th.

Also, remember the bottling event we are having on January 29th where you can bring your own bottles (or buy some new ones, at cost, from us) and fill them and take them home for a very attractive price - less for two cases or more. I will send out the details of that event shortly.

Hope to see you soon.

Tom Kruse

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Monday August 16th

Dear Friends,
For those of you who have not visited in a while, it's time you repaid us a visit.

All of the wines are absolutely delicious. Our vineyard produces such nice grapes that all I have to do as a winemaker is provide a good environment for the process to take place in and do things in a timely manner. Of course it took about twentyfive years to find this place.

I talk to winemakers all the time and they frequently talk about total acidity, ph, and other measureable parameters. Then, when it's my turn to talk I have to honestly tell them I don't measure these things. For us, all the work went into finding this property and then planting and caring for our vineyard - Claire's Field. Then every year when we prune, each of our 8,000 vines is individually pruned according to its' needs. People in this business all agree that if you get pefect grapes then your job is, primarily, not to screw them up.

There are somethings that I do measure. One is the sugar of the grapes as one of the indicators of ripeness. Then, while the grapes are fermenting I innoculate the red musts with malo-lactic cultures to bring about the malo-lactic fermentation. This changes the malic acid to lactic acid and makes the wine softer. It is almost always just referred to as ML. If I have any doubt that this is finished I do a paper chromatograph test to make sure. We also measure the alcohol of all the finished wines because it has to appear on the label and the amount of excise tax for wines under 14% is different than for wines in excess of 14%. Otherwise my chief instruments for guaging the process and deciding when to bottle are my nose and palate.

Yes, I am getting older and organoleptic analysis is not as easy as it used to be. Having a really good glass is half the job. A base, stem and generous bowl with a narrow top. When I thief some wine into a glass from a barrel the surface area of the wine in the glass might be around three or four square inches. But when I swirl the wine it coats the sides of the glass and I more than double the surface area of wine exposed to the air. The volatile constituents that can break the surface tension and become airborne are also more than doubled. This is the best way to do it. You can also take a sip and lower your head and inhale air through the wine in you mouth. This allows vapors that you create to go past your olfactory nerve ending and you get more from the wine. It sounds kind of obnoxious though and is not for polite company.

I saw a really neat tool at the Unified Wine Symposium in Sacramento a couple of years ago. It is called "The Vino Chapeau" (wine hat) Wine Aroma Concentrator It is a thin, clear, flexible plastic odorless disk that you can lay on the top of your glass. It clings to the glass so it won't slip off. So you pour some wine into the glass, put the Vino Chapeau on the glass, swirl the glass, wait about 30 seconds and then with your nose at the edge of the glass peel off the disk. You will find that without the opportunity for air currents to waft the aroma out of your glass it becomes enormously concentrated. While this is not something you would ordinarily do with every glass of wine you enjoy it is enormously beneficial when you are tasting critically. I think you can buy them in a set of four. Check it out at vinochapeau.com.

Remember, our business depends on you. Please pass this along to your wine appreciating friends.

Tom

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June Quiz!

Pictured below are four leaves one from each variety we grow. Each is typical of the variety. We grow Cabernet, Chardonnay,
Merlot and Zinfandel. Can you identify the leaves? Which leaf belongs to what variety?

(And the answer is: Starting at the upper left and going clockwise the leaves are Zinfandel, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Tom

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Wednesday June 16th, 2010

Dear Friends
It is said that California has two kinds or weather - nice or unusual.

This year has been mostly of the latter. When I walk through the vineyard I am struck by how late the vines have flowered and what a light crop has set. Mostly the reds, the Chardonnay has a fairly normal crop.

This past Spring I decided I was going to collect and plant Black Walnuts from the tree near the house. An amazing number of them sprouted and I now have a row of Walnut seedlings next to the fence of the large garden area. This Winter when they go dormant I will see about digging
them up and transplanting them bare-root. It is one of those things that you embark on very casually and realize later that you have created yet another thing to keep track of and care for. However if I can get them through this summer and get them in their final spot next year I may rest
assured they will be relatively carefree and an improvement to the property. They grow well around here.

We have released the first estate bottle fermented sparkling wine from the Estate Chardonnay here. It is dryly austere and, refuses to be taken lightly. I guess I should say that I don't like the wine to be the center of attention at a meal or other occassion. It's job is adjunct and complementary.

This Champagne, however, commands your attention. Not rude but assertive. If you decide to try it always chill the bottle for a few hours and serve in a pristine flute.

Thanks for reading.
Tom

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Tuesday May 11th, 2010

Friends,
It is said that there are two kinds of weather in California. Nice or unusual. This Spring is defintely the latter.

There is still some green in our hills and we're approaching the middle of May! Our biggest threat is powdery mildew and to prevent this we spray the vines with sulfur. Usually we have an almost completely dry late Spring, Summer and Fall. No rain and low humidity make growing grapes in California easier than almost anywhere else in the world. If you hear a California grape grower complaining then you know you're just listening to a complainer.

Yes, of course, we have concerns and worries but the weather isn't usually bad. There couldn't be a nicer place to grow grapes than Santa Clara County. In viticultural parlance we are a Region Two as far as heat summation in day-degrees. The nominal growing season for grapes is from April 1st to November 1st. The average daily temperature between high and low is measured and then 50 degrees is subtracted. That is the temperature below which shoots don't grow. For each day then, there is a day-degree facture. If the first of April had a high temp. of 70and a low temp. of 50 then the average is 60. Subtract 50 from that and for that one day, the 1st of April, you have ten day-degrees. Every day is kept track of and the whole season is added together.

Region one, being the coolest, has 2,000 to 2,500 day degrees. Examples of that are Santa Cruz, most of Monterey County, the Carneros District of Napa County and so on. Region 2 is 2,500 to 3,000 day-degrees. All of Santa Clara County is in that range. Region 3 is 3,000 to 3,500 and so on. Napa County has four regions in it, the warmest area being Region 4 in Calistoga at the North end of the county. There is no bay influence there and it is roughly as warm as Sacramento.

The Cabernets Napa is know for come from a Region 3 area between Napa and St. Helena. Understanding this influences what variety you plant, what the row direction will be, North-South or East-West, and what type of trellis system you train your vines to grow in.
Our rows run North-South and we employ a quadrilateral cordon system of trellising. This is to maximize the warmth and to control the inherent vigor of our plants in a very good soil.

When we first planted there was an excess of fertility in our soil and the shoots would easily grow six or seven feet. This is the 13th year of growing. We have not fertilized and our winter cover crop is annual rye grass. The vines have "tamed down" now so that the shoots (canes) are about three to four feet long when they stop growing in the Fall so then they can concentrate instead on making sugar for the grapes. If you have between three and four feet of cane length, with healthy leaves, that is usually enough leaf surface area to ripen grapes.

We are getting extremely good flavors from our vines and they are at the beginning of their prime.

More later
Tom

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Monday, February 12th, 2010

Twelve Things to Remember On St. Valentine's Day

• THE VALUE OF TIME
• THE PLEASURE OF WORKING
• THE DIGNITY OF SIMPLICITY
• THE SUCCESS OF PERSEVERANCE
• THE WORTH OF CHARACTER
• THE POWER OF KINDNESS
• THE INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE
• THE OBLIGATION OF DUTY
• THE WISDOM OF ECONOMY
• THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE
• THE IMPROVEMENT OF TALENT
• THE JOY OF ORIGINATING

All leading to happy and successful lives.
We hope you have a wonderful Valentines Day!

Tom & Karen

More reading about champagne!

Most of you know about the traditional process referred to as "a la Methode Champenoise" but for those who might have forgotten we pick the grapes for our champagne when they are at 20% sugar. This is slightly under ripe. As with all under ripe fruit they are high in acid (tart) and, because the sugar is lower than for our Chardonnay table wine, after it is finished fermenting the wine will have approx. 11% alcohol in it.

So in the Spring following the making of the wine we put the wine in the bottling tank and we add a very carefully measured amount of sugar (24 gr per liter) and a new innoculum of yeast. Then we bottle this wine in the very strong traditional champagne bottle and we place a temporary cap on it. The bottles go into wooden bins, on their sides, in or cellar where it is cooler and the yeast ferments the sugar.

In regular winemaking the sugar produces CO2 and it goes off into the atmosphere, but because the wine is fermenting in the bottle the CO2 cannot escape so it remains in solution and builds up pressure. Laying the bottles on their sides also exposes the yeast to the wine with a greater surface area. This imparts a yeasty character to the wine.

When it is time we take the bottles out of the bins and shake them up to get all the yeast in suspension and they are placed neck down at an inverted angle. We turn the bottles (riddle) every day so that after a few weeks all the yeast is down in the neck of the bottle. I chill the bottles and freeze the wine in just the neck of the bottle. Then I turn the bottle right side up and pry the cap off. The pressure that developed in the bottle, 90 psi, blows out the frozen plug and I can put the "cork" cork and wire it down.

Then we have to let the bottles come back to ambient teperature and wash them and label them. Once I tried to count how many times each bottle had to be handled and I gave up. Of course large producers have all of these processes automated.
Tom

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Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Dear Friends,
I am hoping that your holidays were good for you and your families.

We start the New Year here with a dormant vineyard in need of pruning. January, for us, is always a new beginning. We reflect on the harvest just over and make decisions about this coming year and what it might bring. Is there anything we want to do differently? Leave more or fewer buds (we actually count them), lengthen or shorten the cordons, fine tune the trellising and hope we have enough rain to carry us into June when we think about irrigating.

Our vineyard is, perhaps, one of the finest in California. You are invited to walk around and look at it anytime. The trellis system we use is called a quadrilateral cordon. It actually takes several years to train the vines to this system but once they are fully extended on the wires this system is not only productive but it yields high quality fruit.

Many of you have participated in aspects of our work in the vineyard; cane tucking, leaf pulling and harvest. These are essential to growing the best grapes. I'm grateful for your help.

Very shortly I will be sending out a notice for classes we give here on grape growing. One will be a short class on pruning and the other will be an all day class on "Planting the Home Vineyard".

In the meantime, I hope to see you on the 16th.
Tom Kruse

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We received a Double Gold Medal!

First, I want to let all of you know that our winery just received a Double Gold Medal for our 2004 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon from the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Judging - a very prestigious tasting. We are of course very proud of our wine and this award, along with others from international competitions, validates our belief that we have established a world class vineyard.