The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: Live Oak Vineyard

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 [...]

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 [...]