The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: Live Oak Vineyard

Syrah Harvest 2012

It’s that time again — harvest day!  We had a recent heat wave in San Diego that pushed up our syrah harvest date from previous years.  Luckily the heat wave broke for harvest day, though it was still pretty hot after the sun came up! Once again the Curds and Wine Grapes to Glass Hands-on […]

Bad News for Sober Wife’s Primitivo!

The heat wave is continuing, and I got an email today that the Primitivo at Sober Wife Vineyard is almost all raisined — there is no way it will last for our planned August 26th harvest. As it is, they don’t think there will be much to harvest at all! This is very sad news, […]

Heat Wave Brings Harvest Early for 2012

We have had some unusually hot weather in San Diego county for about a week now, and it has been making all the grapes in the area ripen one to two weeks earlier than expected. I was not surprised when Mike Hoffman from Live Oak Vineyard and Steve Baum from Sober Wife Vineyard called to […]

Visit to Live Oak and Sober Wife Vineyards

It’s time to start thinking about harvest season again, so my hubby and I headed up to Fallbrook to visit Live Oak Vineyard and Sober Wife Vineyard, where we’ll be harvesting this year. We started up at Live Oak Vineyard in the “Cima Sur” Vineyard at the upper part of the vineyard. The Hoffmans have […]

2012 Winemaker Magazine Award

We had a great time at the Winemaker Magazine conference in Santa Barbara last year in 2011, I was sorry to miss it this year.  But, the Finger Lakes are not exactly driving distance from San Diego!  I did get some great news today — I won a Gold Medal for my 2011 Cellar Craft […]

2011 Syrah Tasting Party #2

My 2011 Hands-on Harvest class met again last night to check out the progress on our 2011 Live Oak Vineyard Fallbrook syrahs. Details on fermentation and previous tasting notes are in prior blog posts.  Here are our tasting notes: Batch #1 — No additional oak was added after the first racking. Peppery aromas and very peppery, […]

2011 Syrah Tasting and the Case of the Stinky Syrah

My Hands-on Winemaking Class got together last night for a potluck dinner to taste the fruits of our labors. We put French oak cubes in the wines about 2 months ago, so now is a good time to give them all a taste to see if there is enough oak, or if it needs more. […]

Sluggish Syrah Malo Finally Done!

I just tested our 2011 syrah batch #1 for malic acid levels, and it’s finally done!  I’m still baffled why this one batch, out of four total, took 2 more weeks to finish MLF than the others.  The particular yeast used (ICV-D80) must have produced something that was slowing down the malolactic bacteria.  I’m curious […]

Syrah MLF (mostly) Done

  It’s almost 6 weeks after initiating malolactic fermentation on our 2011 Fallbrook Syrah. I tested malic acid levels today with the Accuvin quick tests. Batch #1 (fermented with ICV-D80) is the one batch that didn’t seem to be progressing at all, but today it seems to be below the max value on the scale. […]

Pitching Yeast on 2011 Syrah

We did a 3-day cold soak on our 2011 syrah, mostly out of convenience.  I get a little nervous doing more than 2 days, and I don’t think I’ll soak this long again before pitching the yeast.  Besides the cost of putting 10 pounds of dry ice into the buckets every morning, the must does […]