By request, I brought some homemade cheeses to sample paired with their wines. I had some queso fresco, 1-month aged colby, and 3-month aged manchego. The manchego was the sharpest, and went very well with the 2006 Private Reserve Estate Syrah and the 2008 Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. These 2 wines are grown on their own vineyards, whereas other wines may be from San Diego county or other parts of California. We tried several different wines, they were all great, but these two were definitely among our top favorites.

Sam then took us around the winery and gave us a little history. Her family bought the winery in 1927, during prohibition. The winery is surrounded by olive trees, which kept the winery going until it could legally make wine again.  Unfortunately, the olive trees are under attack by a fruit fly, so olive oil production is now on hold.

The original harvesting machinery and winemaking equipment is still on the grounds, which I found very fascinating and intriguing.  Below, the original crush pad.  On the right (now filled with barrel hoops) is the bin where the grapes were placed to be fed up the chute into the crusher destemmer.

The crushed grapes then fell down the shoot below and was carried to the fermentation tanks to the left.

The fermenting grapes were punched down and stirred with a big, heavy metal rod with a kind of rake at the end.

SoCal Wine Diva demonstrates heft of antique punching/stirring tool

Original wine presses

This is not the working crushpad, though, now they have really spiffy modern equipment in another barn.  They have been making wine with the same basic processes for 3 generations!  They will be harvesting several tons of five different varieties of grapes from around San Diego county in the next few weeks, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.  A few weeks after harvest and crush they will press out the wine with their super-cool press.

Stirring syrah must

Uber-cool wine press at Bernardo Winery

Wine being pressed at Bernardo Winery

Behind the original crushpad is the original barrel barn.  Giant redwood tanks are now used to hold port, sherry, and vinegar.  A 65-year-old tawny port will be released soon, and Sam said it is incredible.  That is a long time to wait, for sure!

On the wall of the barn is the ghost portrait, where the original painting has faded into the wall.  Sam said at different times the eyes will be looking in a different direction than you thought it was before.  I had to agree, just from the few minutes we were there!

After our tour, we ate at Cafe Merlot. The food was great, the service entertaining. They make a mean sangria, too.  Then we cruised around the village a little more, checking out the glass blower.

We wandered out to the vineyard to check out the vines there.  Zinfandel and muscat were growing in the back, but most of the grapes used for the Private Reserve estate wines are grown in Ramona and other San Diego county locations.  The fruit hanging on the vines were quite ripe, ready for harvest.

It was a great day all around.  Bernardo Winery is definitely a great place to spend a few hours and taste some great wines.

My in-laws are visiting from Germany, and that seemed like a good reason to check the progress of all of the vintage 2009 wines in the shower.  I pulled 100 mL samples from various carboys for a taste.

We started with the Fallbrook syrah. This wine already has great aromas with big fruit and good spice. The wine is very clear and a nice dark garnet in color. Very fruit-forward on the palate with good oak, fruit, and spice balance. This wine turned out to be our favorite for the night, too bad it’s the smallest lot of wine for 2009.

Next we sampled the primitivo from Amador county. I put both American and French oak in this wine but have kept them separate to see how they each impact the final product. We started with the French oak sample. The wine had great cherry fruit aromas and great color. Good acidity, very dry with good tannins and fruit. In comparison, the wine with American oak had more caramel flavors and was slightly sweeter tasting. Both were great, but my father-in-law said I should keep the American-oaked primitivo separate to bottle on its own. A quick 50/50 blend of the two oaks was also very nice, so it will be tough to decide how to divvy this wine up; I am also planning to make a Paraduxx-like blend with merlot and cabernet sauvignon.

We moved on to the merlot from Lambert Bridge vineyard in Sonoma county. It is a little different from the 2008 vintage, although that year the merlot did not finish MLF. The 2009 vintage has aromas of bell pepper with vanilla, and flavors of dark fruit with good spice. Big tannins and good acid in this wine as well. This sample was just from the “overflow” carboy, though, which got French oak added to it. The rest of that merlot is in our American oak barrel that needed extra oak added, so that might taste a little different.

Finally we tasted the petite sirah (again, just the “overflow” carboy). Aromas on this wine were faint, and a little “off”. The wine is a deep, inky black-purple in color, but very clear. Happily there were no weird off flavors, the wine has good tannins but not as much acid as I expected. It has a very green, young flavor, with bell pepper, black currant, and light spice. But, there’s plenty of time for the petite sirah and merlot to develop more, as we all decided at our last tasting to leave both of these in the barrels for another year.

Even though we only had 5 samples of wine, they were all very “big” and quite alcoholic.  So, we wound down the evening with a nice, refreshing parmesan flan with fresh home-grown heirloom tomatoes and basil on top.

I got an email today from Mike Hoffman that the syrah started veraison and harvest should be around the first week of September.  Hopefully there won’t be a last-minute heat wave like last year, which raisined a lot of the grapes before we could pick them for wine.

I’ll need to start thinking about what supplies I’ll need for harvest and crush, I should order them soon so that they are here when I need them.  In the meantime, to prepare for harvest day, I bottled one bottle of the 2009 vintage to have when we’re done picking.  I’ll bottle the rest soon, I just need corks.

I took the bottom of a topper bottle to taste, so probably not the best representation of the wine, but it’s still pretty good.  Good oak on the nose, with aromas and flavors candied fruits and light spice.  This sample was not clear, but the wine I pulled off for the bottle was very clear.  Looking forward to the 2010 harvest!

John and Paula York hosted the annual Ramona Valley Vineyard Association summer social at Hellanback Ranch. It was HOT, even in the shade, but such a beautiful location.  Everyone brought wine and a side dish, and John grilled up home grown and raised beef burgers — they were SO good.  We got to taste a lot of wonderful Ramona Valley wines, including Cactus Star, Milagro Farms Winery, Paccielo Vineyard, Eagles Nest Winery, and of course Hellanback Ranch.

There was a wine contest, with wines that were made in San Diego County from grapes grown in San Diego County.  John and Paula presented first, second, and third place “horseshoe awards” to winners, as well as a special etched bottle of wine.  Micole More won the blue horseshoe for a Ramona Zin and Andy Harris won the red for his Ramona Zin.  My friend Ray won the white horseshoe for his Syrah.

After the festivities, we headed over to Highland Valley Vineyard to check out the progress there.  The vines are doing well.  It was a lovely evening, so we chilled on the deck of the house-in-progress listening to the neighboring goats and summer insects until well after sunset.  It’s really beautiful out there.

We visited Fallbrook Winery yesterday with some of our friends.  It has been unusually cold and dreary around San Diego, but the sun eventually came out later in our tour.  We were greeted by Vernon Kindred, one of the winemakers at Fallbrook.  He walked us through some of the vineyards while describing the growing season and their vineyard management practices.

The sangiovese was just starting veraison, so the rows will be netted soon to keep out hungry birds.

Next we checked into the barrel barn, where the crush equipment is also housed.  Vernon walked us through what happens at harvest and crush.

Then it was on to the highlight of the tour — the tastings!  We tasted several wines, including the reserve sauvignon blanc, the reserve Chardonnay, the special selection Sleepy Hollow Chardonnay, Estate Grown rosato, reserve merlot, cabernet sauvignon, bordeaux blend BDX, and finally the estate syrah.  Why, yes, that is quite a bit of wine, why do you ask?

But, that was not all!  We also had the honor of tasting several barrel samples as well.  After the barrel tastings, we had a lovely picnic lunch out on the patio next to the tasting room.

We were also lucky enough to be there on bottling day, so we could see the 2009 Sleepy Hollow Chardonnay being bottled, labeled, and packed into cases.  We also got a sneak peak tasting of that wine (because we didn’t already have enough, of course!).  There was some detectable bottle shock, but it was tasting very nice already.  The Sleepy Hollow chardonnay is a more buttery, oaky style, whereas the reserve chardonnay is an unoaked, crisp style.

Overall, it was a lovely tour of the beautiful Fallbrook winery.  Their wines are exceptional in my opinion, so if you get a chance, definitely get yourself a bottle or 6.  There are so many hidden gems in San Diego county!

My tasting notes for this wine:  Lovely nose of hay, roses, and spice. Flavors have already come together nicely. Crisp, minerally taste of crunchy apples, persimmon, and toasted spice. Really nice!

The judging notes included: “Enjoyable, unique combination of flavors.” “Nice complex balanced flavors.” “Oak, fruit, dry” — this last comment is very interesting;  several other winemakers at the award ceremony commented on the good oak character in this wine, but there was no oak in this wine!  This wine does have a very nice, creamy smoothness and hints of vanilla reminiscent of oak character.  Either way, it is a lovely, tasty wine, and I’m very glad it was recognized for its excellence.

As for the ‘Bahia Belle’ Blend, my average score was pretty decent, and so I think this wine almost got a bronze.  Personally, I think this wine it too young, but we thought it would be interesting to enter several versions of our first fresh grape wines.  I think this one will fare much better next year, or maybe even the year after that.

Last time I tasted these wines there was no detectable oak, which was not expected from barrels that have only been used once so far.  I added toasted American oak cubes to each barrel, and I can now taste decent oak in the merlot.  However, the petite sirah is just flaccid, almost like water, with no oak or flavor or body — very disappointing!  I would add more cubes to this barrel, but I’m currently out.  There is at least pretty decent tannins, though I did expect more from petite sirah.  I hope this one comes together!

I tested the free SO2 for both, and at least that seems OK — the petite sirah is at about 21 ppm, and the merlot is at 19 ppm.  A good target is 25 ppm for free SO2 in red wines, but these are still high enough for now.  We will add another dose of potassium metabisulfite a few days before we bottle.