Our wines

Most of the wines we now produce come right from the soil you see around the winery.

It's real good dirt and we have just the right amount of sun and breeze to develop ripe healthy fruit. It may be one of the finest natural vineyard sites in the world. This connection between the ground and it's wines cannot be overstressed.

The wines are made by the same caring hands that tend the grapes. Sometimes you read articles wherein self proclaimed "wine writers" describe wines e.g.. "..and it smelled like an old cavalry saddle whose rider may have been incontinent before he abandoned it in a stone root cellar on the southeast side of a hill..." You are left puzzled and unenlightened by their musings. And they get paid to do that!

Our wines are made from completely ripe fruit. This means that the birds get their share and there is a slight loss of water in the berry as it passes the 22 per cent sugar content. I feel, depending on the variety, that full ripeness is when the sugar is between 24 and 28% and the skin is supple - not taut - and the fruit acids are just right for flavor balance. This degree of ripeness permits all the flavors to develop and the grapes to outgrow any juvenile or vegetal character.

Chardonnay

We get get the least gallons per ton from our Chardonnay. This is because they are fully ripe and then pressed gently to prevent the extraction of phenols and other bitter compounds. The acids are in balance and it is not necessary to promote a malo-latic fermentation to achieve acid balance. This means our Chardonnay is crisp and clean and goes well with food or on it's own. Old time wine advise about white wines going well with fish or fowl is generally correct because dry white wine is higher in acid than red wine. Don't mistake acid for the tannin present in red wines. You know the practice of squeezing lemon juice on fish. You are doing it to add acid and give some zing to the flavor that otherwise is lacking. That's why a high acid wine makes fish taste better. You have a bite of food and a sip of wine . Wine is the last seasoning your food gets. There is nothing worse with food than a buttery Chardonnay. Buttery Chardonnays are produced because the acid was too high in the fruit when it was picked and the winemaker had to induce malo-lactic fermentation to reduce the acidity. Simply put the malic acid (kind of an apple taste) had to be converted into carbon dioxide and lactic acid (butter taste) to reduce the total acidity. This is done by inoculating the wine with lacto bacillus. Then this negative quality is promoted as a good thing by clever advertising. People can recognize the flavor of butter and somehow this ability to recognize a flavor in the wine makes them feel as though they are knowledgeable. Idiots and dodo heads. But in a nice way. I wish all the people who like buttery chardonnays would fall in a cow pie. Not to dwell on that.

Carbernet, Merlot and Zinfandel

The Cab, Merlot and Zin - are also picked when fully developed and ripe. But at a slightly higher sugar content than the Chardonnay. This is so that the alcohol produced by the fermentation will be high enough to preserve the wine in all it's richness for decades.

Our location, with it's afternoon breezes, has enough warmth during the day and coolness in the evening to achieve a near perfect amount of acidity in the fruit. When we decide to harvest the grapes we arrange for a small group of people, around 6, to help with the picking. It's hard work because each bunch is cut from the vine and placed in a bucket. We ferry the buckets on the back of the farm truck to the winery and we dump them into the crusher/stemmer. The grapes fall to the bottom to be placed in ferment's and the stems come out of the end of the machine. We spread these back out in the vineyard and incorporate them into the soil. When our red grapes go into their fermenter it's theirs for the season. It's like going to a French restaurant. The table is yours for the evening. This ability to have a dedicated fermenter for all the reds is especially important. It means we are in no hurry and are forced to take not short cuts. The grapes can be in the ferment's as long as they want. These tanks are small.

First we place the crushed grapes in them and let them soak in their own juices for a day or two. During this time we are growing a sufficient quantity of wine yeast to be able to yeast the whole batch. We grow a specially selected French strain in some of the juice of the same grapes we will ferment. When this starter batch starts frothing we place a portion in each of the tanks to get them fermenting too. In another day the yeast is hard at work metabolizng the sugar in the grapes into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Th eC02 that is released pushes the grapes that are suspended in the tank up to the top to form a "cap". Two times a day we manually "punch down the cap" with specially made implements. This mixes the skins back with the juice and the color which is in the skins is dissolved and released by the newly created alcohol to turn the wine from pink to red. We punch down until no more cap comes up to punch. At this point we place a lid fairly snuggly on the tank and we begin the extended maceration period. Contrary to what you may think about skin contact time making the wine more tannic and astringent ourextended maceration is so long and the tannins themselves are in such huge amounts that they have the opposite effect on your taste buds.

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