The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: Fallbrook

“Barrel” Tasting

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 [...]

Getting Ready for Syrah Harvest

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 [...]

Visit to Fallbrook Winery

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 [...]

Pruning the Vines at Live Oak Vineyard

Most of the east coast is blanketed in snow today.  Meanwhile, we finally got our southern California sunshine back — just in time to prune the syrah vines at Live Oak Vineyard. Mike Hoffman gave us a short tutorial on pruning for his vineyard; he already cut off the bulk of the canes, so we [...]

Syrah Harvest

A group of my friends (some that also blog) agreed to get up and meet at our house at 6 am on Saturday to pick grapes.  Amazingly, they all showed up early, and had some breakfast then headed out to Fallbrook.  Most of the rest of the gang were already there, so we spent a [...]

Syrah Ripening Fast!

Got an email from Mike Hoffman this morning about the syrah – they’re at 23% brix and pH of 3.29 already!  He said next weekend will be harvest time!!!!!

Fallbrook Vineyard Visit

I saw a classified on the SDAWS site for local syrah grapes, and convinced Dave to go in on 500 lbs.  Paul is also going to take 500 lbs to make at home.  This syrah is grown at Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook, and we get to take part in harvest when the grapes are [...]