The rewards and frustrations of home winemaking

The new 50 gallon Flextank finally arrived.  I say finally because I ordered it the first week of September, and was told “it should be there next week” every time I called to check on it.  Now that it has finally arrived, we were a little concerned that something is wrong with it.  When Paul […]

It has been about 6 months since we broke out a Carmenere, which is over 2 years post bottling now. There are no more soapy aromas or flavors! It has big aromas of ripe red fruits, spice, and brambles. Big, bold flavors of roast cherries, plums, currants, and mild spice with hint of burnt toast […]

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 […]

We have lived in San Diego for about 10 years now, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about Bernardo Winery until now. It is the oldest winery in San Diego (actually in southern California), and is truly a unique venue. The winery tasting room is located on the original winery property, and is now […]

It’s a little early to be tasting this wine, but all of my fellow winemakers have all but demolished their stashes, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I did not decant, but poured directly into a Riedel Bordeaux very sweet aromas, not unlike a sherry.  Wine is not clear, but this is not […]

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 […]

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 […]