This past Thursday I headed up I-80 to Davis to attend RAVE 2008. There were a number of cool presentations, but the final talk of the day by Dr. Mark Matthews was by far the most provocative. Matthews covered a lot of ground in his talk, which was an overview of the research he had [...]

I thought that since I shared my recipe for this year’s crush I’d go ahead and outline the protocols other producers have used in the past. You know, for comparison’s sake. The following are general outlines for crafting pinot and will be influenced immensely by the quality of the grapes in a given year. Besides [...]

I promised a cool annoucement and today I’m delivering. But first I’m going to subject you to our tale of licensing woe. If you’d rather skip ahead to the goodies, just skim down to the heading “Follow the Evolution of a Pinot Noir” below. Our Tale of Licensing Woe I mentioned earlier that we had [...]

If you’re just joining us, part 1 in this series is here and you can find part 2 here. Also congrats to my sister Sara and new brother-in-law Ryan Bradley who got hitched last Saturday at Viansa winery! Hope you’re enjoying Rome guys! Ahh, fermentation. The time when the real winemakers get to do their [...]

Part 1 of this year’s pinot story is here. After the must had soaked and temps started to rise, I went about fixing the sugar and pH problems I was facing. As I mentioned in the last post, 27.5 Brix is remarkably high. This is especially true for fruit picked on September 1st. Clearly something [...]