The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: Fallbrook

Bottling Party in Fallbrook

We drove up to Fallbrook yesterday to meet up with Paul and a bunch of his neighbors to bottle his 2009 Merlot and Petite Sirah from Lambert Bridge Vineyard in Sonoma (the same grapes we made wine from that need to be bottled soon).  It was a very nice day, sunny and warm but not […]

Bottling 2009 Fallbrook Syrah

The bottling binge continues!  I finally bottled the 2009 Fallbrook Syrah, our first harvest from Live Oak Vineyard.  We unfortunately came in short due to a heat wave just before harvest, so we have a total of 11 gallons of wine to split between the three of us.  We will each get 18 bottles, which […]

Finally Bottling Primitivo

I have a few wines that are due for bottling, but I was waiting until I opened my shop because I needed corks, and it seemed to make sense that I should buy them from myself.  So today I’m finally bottling my Amador county primitivo.  I’ll bottle most of it as 100% varietal, but I’m […]

Pressing the 2010 Syrah

Our 2010 Syrah from Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook fermented fast, and the brix were below 5 by the next week.  We decided to go ahead and press out the wine before it was completely dry so that we could do it on a weekend day. We took a quick brix test and an obligatory […]

Syrah Harvest 2010 at Live Oak Vineyard

We got up at 5 AM today to drive up to Fallbrook to harvest syrah at Live Oak Vineyard.  The weather has actually been very nice, it was a nice brisk morning drive up.  We had several friends meeting us there to help out with harvest. We did not have any major heat waves like […]

“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 […]

Harvest Not So Late After All

Just got an update from Live Oak Vineyard on the syrah progress, it’s up to 22 brix already. Harvest should be in about a week, which is actually the same time as last year.  So, even though the weather this year has been very strange and is definitely affecting harvest around California, looks like we’re […]

Cold Summer Means Later Harvest for 2010

This “summer” has been unusually cold.  Record-setting coolest high temperatures cold.  Temperatures were below 70 degrees F on the coast, and mid-70’s inland throughout July.  This weird weather is delaying ripening of the grapes, so harvest will be a little later this year, barring another heat wave like last year. Mike Hoffman just sent me […]

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 […]