Eight days later.

There are still 20 days until the beginning of spring, but the casual onlooker would be forgiven for thinking that spring has already arrived in Vinoland.  The Orange muscat vines are all worked up, look at those little leaves.  Those baby leaves have already survived a mini frost earlier in the week and two showers today (a whole 7 minutes of rain, titter, titter. California is great), but they still have a long growing season ahead of them.  Soldier on little leafies!

Sisal.

I have been pruning a lot the past two days.  Sometimes, as I make my way down a row, it is necessary for me to stop at a vine and retie the vine to it's stake, usually because the old piece of twine has degraded, or has been repurposed by one of my feathered friends.  For this small vineyard operation I use twine made from the sisal plant (Agave sisalana).  Sisal made in Brazil.  Yes, Brazil, because it is illegal to grow sisal in the USA.  Sisal is biodegradable and seeing as I don't want to use a polypropylene twine in the vineyard, and I am almost finished with my old bale, Brazilian sisal it had to be.
Whenever possible, I always try my best to buy products made in the USA, so it is very frustrating for me to have to buy a foreign-made product.  It's complicated, as is everything the government pokes its nose into, but because, in the past, sisal was confused with hemp, (a cordage fibre obtained from the stalk of the marijuana plant, Cannibis sativa), sisal has been considered a controlled substance since the passing of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.  Basically, it is illegal to grow sisal in the United States of America.
Historically, hemp was grown by US presidents and was the crop of choice on many southern plantations.  Hemp was used extensively by the USA during World War II to make canvas, rope and GI's uniforms.  But poor sisal, a very useful cordage fibre obtained from the leaves of the sisal plant, has had aspersions cast on its character by being lumped in with the skunky-smelling plant favoured by old, dopey hippies.  It's a travesty.
This evening, when I threw my vineyard-dirty trousers into the laundry basket, I happened to notice that my pants were also made in Brazil.  It's a conspiracy.

Still wine.

Vinomaker is always trying new wines on me blind, as in I haven't got a clue what the wine is.  Handed a glass of mystery wine recently, I had a sniff, I had a taste, I had another sniff.  Hmmm.  Nice aroma (couldn't fault that), pretty nice mouthfeel and flavour (all good there), but it did have a bit of a weird finish.  I was fairly sure that I hadn't had this wine before.  And I hadn't, at least not as a still wine.  The wine turned out to be a Pinot Noir Blanc: a white wine made from a black grape.  And why not?  Some of my very favourite wines on the planet are white wines made from Pinot noir grapes.  But with bubbles.
The Eclectic Wines, 2013 Pinot Noir Blanc (Los Carneros AVA), really opened up the more I tasted it, even the weirdness on the finish went away.  With a quick look at Eclectic's website, I learned that the winemaker is Mike Trotta, who is also the winemaker at Elyse (and I already love their wines).  Eclectic's winemaking philosophy is "less is more" which is quite refreshing when lots of Napa Valley wineries want to bombard the consumer with too much of this and that.  I also like that Eclectic state that they, Mike and his wife Wendy, are suffering from "chronic Cabernet fatigue" - love it!  Eclectic also make a Viognier that I must procure for Vinomaker to try.  Blind, of course.

Et tu, Budus?

Ahem!  I think the Pinot grigio vines are trying to seek their revenge on me for sneaking up on them with a sharp pair of Felcos.  Methinks, I'd better watch my back.
I started pruning the Cabernet sauvignon vines today.  They're still dormant-ish, although the pruning wounds are bleeding profusely. Hopefully, in this battle of Vinogirl versus budbreak, I started pruning early enough this year that I'll be finished before the Cabernet, and Syrah, vines wake up, get organised and gang up on me.  "Cry 'havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war."  Or something like that.

Buddy, you're back!

Yup, budbreak in the Orange muscat vines is underway.  My little buddies are returning for another vintage of grapey-goodness and I am happy to see them.  Only about a week earlier than last year, I actually think this is the very same vine that I photographed in February 2014. What an overachiever!
Vinoland's white grapes are all pruned and tied down, (I finished them on Tuesday), and tomorrow I will start on the black grapes. Weather permitting, I plan to prune all this weekend which should keep me on track to get all the pruning done in a timely fashion this year.  Well, that's my plan anyway.
Bud on little buddies!

An urban winery.

Today is Vinomaker's birthday.  Whoo hoo!
I actually managed to get Vinomaker to take some time off work to go and do a quick wine tasting with me, something we haven't done for a couple years.  And we didn't even have to go very far, just a quick drive into downtown Napa.
St. Clair Brown Winery is located in a light-industrial area of the city of Napa.  Surrounded by sheet metal fabrication shops and auto repair businesses, St. Clair Brown is truly an urban winery.  Currently, the winery produces about 200 cases each of nine different wines of which Vinomaker and I tasted four (their 4 Wine Sampler).  The winery has a permit to serve food and I originally had intended to have lunch there, but with a fairly tight schedule we decided to just do a tasting.  The wines were all very pleasant; a 2011 Coombsville Chardonnay (a tad too oaky), a 2008 Coombsville Syrah, a 2010 Oak Knoll/Atlas Peak Merlot and a 2010 Oak Knoll/Atlas Peak/St. Helena Cabernet Sauvignon.  Our host, the son of one of the owners, was delightful, the wines exhibited a distinct winemaking style, the urban environment was fun and a chat with owner Laina Brown was interesting - an enjoyable experience.  The winery does not, however, offer complimentary tastings to the other wine industry folks.  Now, I'm not cheap, and I was only too happy to pay the $20.00 tasting fee, but I do believe it is a little short-sighted of St. Clair Brown. What better marketing/advertising is there than to make other winery personnel ambassadors of your brand?  It is my belief that a 2 fluid ounce pour can go an awfully long way in promoting a winery.  On to dinner.
Vinomaker had not been to R&D Kitchen in Yountville, so that is where I decided to take him for his birthday dinner.  R&D does have a rather limited menu, but I sort of like that about this restaurant.  More important to Vinomaker, perhaps, was R&D's 'wine by the glass' wine list. I just had one glass of Schramsberg Brut Rosé because I was driving, but Vinomaker had a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine.  The white was a 2013 Cowhorn Spiral 36 (Applegate Valley AVA, Oregon), a blend of Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne, (the Marsanne really popped in this wine). The red was a 2012 Page Wine Cellars/Revolver Wine Company 'The Fury' Cabernet Franc (Napa Valley AVA), really nice, lots of dark berries, dried flowers and dried herbs on the nose.  And that's it: yet another anniversary of Vinomaker's birth done and dusted.  Oh, and Gung hei fat choi!
Happy birthday Vinomaker!

I was wrong.

Lately, I have found myself out and about in Napa with some unusual items in my handbag, items that I wouldn't normally carry around with me.  Stuff like, a pound of minced beef, a glass and bronze fruit bowl, a woollen jumper, a baguette (I felt so Parisian) and a rather snazzy, reflective flea collar (not for me, obviously).  I wasn't carrying all of these items at once - my everyday handbag is big, but not that big.  No, each item represented a single trip to a store on a day when I had forgotten to take a reusable bag with me.
As of January 1st 2015, single use plastic bags have been banned in the city of Napa.  There are a few exceptions to the new ordinance e.g., bags for prescription drugs and take-out food are exempt, for now.  But if one happens to need to transport groceries home, and have forgotten to bring a bag, the store is required by law to charge the customer at least 10 cents for a paper bag.
I thought that alcoholic beverages were something that had to be bagged.  I buy quite a bit of wine at wineries and they will not let you leave the premises without bagging the bottle first, so when I recently bought a bottle of wine at Vallerga's Market in Napa I patiently waited for my purchase to be bagged.  And I waited. Then I asked for a bag. Well, to cut a long story short the cashier and I had a bit of a barney, in fact he was still shouting at me as I left the store. Great customer service, eh?  I won't be shopping at that store any time soon.
I did a bit of research and apparently I was wrong, I have to admit it. Neither the city nor the county (where most wineries are located) of Napa require alcohol to be bagged: the same goes for the entire state of California.  Whilst California does enforce a strict "no open container" law, that prevents any alcoholic beverage being unsealed in public, or in a car, the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Act (as of November 2011) does indeed allow folks to walk down the street with a naked bottle of hooch in their hand - as long as it is unopened.  This is a difficult concept for me to get my head around.
In puritanical America - the only country in the world that has been able to enact a law such as the Volstead Act, and even in this day and age does not legally allow an adult to consume an alcoholic beverage until they are 21 years old - am I right in assuming that I would be able to walk down a busy street in broad daylight with a screwcap-bottle of wine, albeit unopened, in my hand?  Call me old fashioned, but I don't think the local constabulary is going to endorse that sort of behaviour any time soon.

Happy St. Valentine's Day: 2015.

I tried to make a heart out of some of the old wood that I am pruning off the grapevines, but it was a disaster.  I had to use this one I'd bought instead.  I'm not very crafty.
Love dogs!  Love wine!  Love life!
Happy St. Valentine's Day to you all.

CADE.

Whilst out to dinner last night with some friends at Morimoto, I saw somebody that I hadn't seen in a couple of years - we actually used to work together for a little while.  Vinomaker and I don't eat out very often but when we do I usually bump into someone I know.  It was lovely to see my old coworker and have a quick catch-up. And it reminded me to drink a bottle of CADE Sauvignon Blanc that's been sitting in my wine cooler for a while, because CADE is the winery where my ex-coworker is currently employed.
I liked the 2012 vintage of this wine, so I expected to like the 2013, and I did.  For me, this wine had lemon drops and a subtle hint of flowering rosemary on the nose, a lovely mouth-filling texture, lemon and orange peel on the palate and a winning acidity.  Nice.
Just in case anyone was wondering, with dinner I drank a TWWIAGE Sauvignon Blanc and a Hill Family Estate, 2012 Albariño (Napa AVA), of which the latter paired really well with my cold, dead fish.

About that Franciacorta stuff.

Everything one could possibly want to know about Franciacorta, the sparkling wine that hails from the province of Brescia in Lombardy, can now be found at 'franciacorta: the real story'. Jeremy Parzen, Ph.D. (aka Do Bianchi) has recently been tasked with getting the word out about this wonderfully elegant bubbly.  In a recent post on Jeremy's blog there are several links to the Franciacorta consortium's new Facebook page and Twitter account, etc., where one can read the 'real story' behind this intriguing wine/appellation.  Or just look at some rather pretty photographs.
In my wine cooler, at this very moment, I have a bottle of Contadi Castaldi Stile Franciacorta Brut which will be quaffed this coming weekend.  I have had this particular wine before and although I'd like to try a Franciacorta from a different producer, alas, this one was all that was available in my local-ish BevMo.  (But at $19.99 - regular price, not sale - I am not complaining.) Hopefully, further promotion of this delightful wine will lead to more Franciacorta wines being available in the U.S.  Go 2B!

Fish Friendly (wine) Farming.

Last week I noticed a couple of new signs in the neighbourhood, (I think they are in two different vineyards).  The first time I spotted them, as I whizzed by on my way to TWWIAGE, I saw the drawing of the fish. The next day I saw the word friendly.  Fish-friendly wine?  A Sauvignon Blanc, perhaps?  There isn't a creek on either of these vineyards, but they each do climb a little up a gentle slope, so I was intrigued by the brightly coloured signs.  On my day off I decided to stop and have a better look and do a little research.
The Fish Friendly Farming programme is run by the California Land Stewardship Institute (CLSI).  The CLSI is a non-profit organisation that works with farmers and landowners to design and implement environmental projects that will help reduce the amount of fine sediment entering the waterways of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties.  The CLSI believes that the declining population of coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout in California is an indication of the overall health of the ecosystem.  The CLSI's blurb says that they are; "Encouraging practices that protect the endangered coho salmon and steelhead trout. Because premium food and wine comes from a pristine environment." Well now, I love good food and good wine so I feel that this programme is something I could get behind: good stewardship of the land is after all the responsible thing to do.
I don't know how much it costs to be certified 'fish friendly' (it probably isn't cheap) and one has to be re-certified every 5 years and one has to buy the metal signs.  Still it may all be worth it if rivers, streams and the fish in them benefit from farmers who perform Best Management Practices.  But - and there is always a but for me - I'm afraid that being certified fish friendly for some winegrowers and wineries would just be another marketing tool to sell more wine. Consumers nowadays are bombarded with green-labeled products and a lot of those products don't stand up to what they claim to be. Greenwashing is the term that has been coined to describe the use of misleading marketing about the purported environmental benefits of certain consumer goods.  And I'm pretty sure that wine, as just another consumer product, isn't immune to such deceptive practices.
Caveat emptor!

Bucket of bungs.

New French oak barrels come with rough hewn oak bungs, held securely in the bung hole with a disc of cotton or hessian, which are generally discarded (in favour of silicone bungs for barrel aging).  I salvaged a bucketful of these bungs that were being thrown away at TWWIAGE.  Why, you might ask?  Because they make great kindling, that's why.  There is no better wood to start a fire with, on a cold winter's night, than wood from 200 - 300 year old trees that has been air-dried for up to 48 months.  It's my own version of toasting oak.
Most of the trees that are felled for the production of French oak barrels (predominantly Quercus sessiliflora and Quercus petraea) come from a handful of forests (e.g., Allier, Limousin and Tronçais) that were planted during Napoleonic times for shipbuilding.  Call me old fashioned, but I always feel warm and toasty when I think that some of the wood intended for the French navy meets its Waterloo in my hearth.  Ouch!
And happy St. Trifon's Day everyone!