The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

Tag archive: petite sirah

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 San Diego County Homemade Wine Awards

It’s that time again for the San Diego County Fair Homemade Wine contest Awards! I submitted 3 wines this year: 2009 “Cabrillo Bridge” Petite Sirah, which won a silver medal (should have been a gold!), 2008 Winexpert Limited Edition Carmenere/Cabernet blend, which won a bronze medal, and 2011 Winexpert Symphony, which won a silver medal. […]

Oak Trials: Into the Bottle

It is finally time to bottle the oak trials today!ย  I am also bottling the 2009 Petite Sirah that I did egg white fining on, so I can compare it to the unfined wine side-by-side.ย  The chardonnays all cleared out really nicely, which is great so I can bottle directly from the individual jugs — […]

Bottling 2009 Vintage Barrel Wines

We finally set a date and bottled the 2009 Merlot and Petite Sirah from Van Alyea Ranch in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma.ย  The wines are tasting great, and we could have bottled before now but I realized I didn’t have a spigot to attach a hose to clean out the barrels after they were empty. […]

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).ย  It was a very nice day, sunny and warm but not […]

Tasting Fined Petite Sirah

It’s time to rack the Petite Sirah off of the egg white fining lees and see how it tastes! The wine is very clear, and there was not a lot of lees on the bottom. Tasting the fined wine side-by-side with the unfined wine, I definitely prefer fined wine. It did smooth out taste without […]

Shuffling Petite Sirah

I wanted to try some egg white fining on the 2009 Petite Sirah.ย  We tasted it recently and decided it was good without any fining, but I’ve had a previous vintage with fining and really liked the results.ย  So, I decided to go for it. We have a 30 gallon barrel plus one 6 gallon […]

Barrel Tastings of Merlot and Petite Sirah

Josh and Dave came by to taste the progress of the 2009 merlot and petite sirah. Last time we tasted them, they seemed to really lack any oak flavor, so we thought we might need to add more cubes to the barrels. We tasted the merlot first, and it is surprisingly good — not overly […]

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.ย  So today I’m finally bottling my Amador county primitivo.ย  I’ll bottle most of it as 100% varietal, but I’m […]

Racking Barrels and Setting Up Shop

The barrels needed a new home, so we decided it was a good time to rack out the wine and clean out the barrels.ย  Both the merlot and petite sirah need more oak, so we’re going to leave them in the barrels for another year with some extra oak cubes added in.ย  We pumped the […]