Got an email from Mike Hoffman yesterday. He took several random samples from his upper vineyard “Cima Sur” and the lower vineyard “Este”. As usual, the upper vineyard has a slightly higher brix reading average of 19 brix, and the lower vineyard is currently at average 17.6 brix. We are shooting for around 23-24 brix [...]
Tag archive: syrah
We went to visit Live Oak Vineyard today to see how the syrah is coming along this year. Veraison is already starting in the syrah, so harvest might be a little early this year! Here is the second year growth of the Deaver clone Zinfandel, not yet starting veraison. Check out the giant clusters: And, [...]
The awards ceremony for the San Diego County Fair Homemade Wine Competition was yesterday. I couldn’t make it because I had to run the shop, but my hubby went to enjoy the fun and bring home my awards. I submitted 3 wines, and they all won medals: the 2010 Winexpert limited edition Pacifica White won [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]