Buy Local Wine! September 2010

At a recent local wine competition awards dinner, I spoke to one of the judges who is a well qualified gentleman from New York, who was a judge for the famous Finger Lakes International Wine Competition.  This year was his first year judging...
Harvest Weekend #1

Harvest Weekend #1

Yesterday we had 27 wonderful buyers and volunteers here to harvest 3,300 pounds of Petite Syrah grapes. It was VERY hot. 90 at 9 a.m. There are another 600 pounds out there that the buyers will come to pick next Saturday.  We were done by noon...
Judging Wine

Judging Wine

A paper written some time ago by our friend Lum Eisenman on Judging Wine, talks about the consumer oriented competitions and the Davis 20-point system to judge wine – originally devised to expedite bulk-wine transfers between wineries (like...
Cucamonga Curly

Cucamonga Curly

Cucamonga was the first true home to the earliest vineyards planted by the Spanish missionaries moving northward from Mexico into California.  Long before Napa, Sonoma, the Central Coast and other well-known and respected appellations, Cucamonga vineyards were home to...

Harvest – Finally!

The whole state of California is about 15 days on average, late harvesting wine grapes.  We’d normally have harvested on Labor Day Weekend, but now are not picking the Petite Syrah until September 25th and the Zinfandel will likely be...