The Pine Blog

A Very Special Production Day

What an amazing feeling to bottle your first vintage. Watching your label go on a bottle, full of the wine you spent the last year with so intimately. The bottles rattle down the line in mass, lifted and placed into cases and then rumble down the rollers to be palletized.

Cases in form, ready to hit the streets and find their fate, find you. How exciting to know that the wine made it and my part for this vintage is over. Not many things in life press a permanent smile onto the face, this experience does! The smile is still on my face.

After all the excitement and thrill, this experience comes down to the people involved. First and foremost Andrew... he didn't just open their winery to me, they made me believe. Believe that this dream was possible! Thanks to them for keeping me from running back to the mountains. The growers, Peter and Jason that took a chance on me making wine out of their fruit, their hard work.

Then there are all the great people you meet along the way, other people who make wine, people that come by the winery to taste and share their story, people who help during harvest and bottling just because they want to be involved in wine. It is all these people who make this experience all the more amazing. Thanks!

Jun 26, 2010 at 2:01 PM

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2006 Vintage Finally Takes Shape

The last wine of the 2006 vintage has finally taken shape. With a renewed emphasis on our Cabernet heritage our small-production wines take precedence and our largest production wine, the Pinot Noir, had to wait.

Numbering now at about 1,000 cases, the 2006 vintage of Cabernet will be released in April or May of this year. What began in my head as an 80%+ Cabernet blend (a little bit of Cab Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot in there to get to 100%) ended up in my glass as a 100% Cab comprised of six different clones from four different vineyards.

I drew samples from nine different barrel groups, taking wine from 2-4 barrels from each group depending upon how barrels are available. I then taste each grouping separately making notes about the wines. Next, I put together a representative blend of just the Cabernets as that wine would be the foundation for whatever other Bordeaux varieties might make the cut.

First impressions are important but hardly conclusive. I have made blends that I loved and got them home to taste them later and couldn't imagine what I liked in the wine. The same on the other pole. After making the Cab blends, I made a blend with the other varieties and let them sit while I went to get my son lunch.

Under the best of circumstances, I will have more than one blend that I like a lot. Then the questions become those of volume and the fate of the barrels that don't make this blend. Some of the folks on our hospitality team tasted the two wines that came out of this session, and the 100% Cabernet ended up being the unanimous favorite.

Right around the beginning of Spring, you'll be able to taste the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon and tell me whether I got it right.

May 1, 2010 at 2:35 PM

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