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, […]
Tag archive: primitivo
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 […]
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 […]
I’ve been planning to make a blend similar to Duckhorn’s “Paraduxx” for a while; their blend is a combination of Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot.ย I was planning to substitute my 2009 Primitivo for the zinfandel, but in a previous blending trial the primitivo just overwhelmed all of the other varietals and any blend was […]
The awards ceremony for the San Diego County Fair Homemade Wine Competition was yesterday.ย 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 […]
Although this wine is pretty newly bottled, I couldn’t wait to give it a taste. We recently got a Vinturi wine aerator, so we’ve been tasting every wine with and without the vinturi treatment. This wine definitely benefited from the treatment. Without aearation, the primi has faint aroma of burnt rubber with roasted red fruits […]
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 […]
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.ย 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 […]
We are planning to bottle the syrah soon, and I will also probably bottle the primitivo as well. The merlot and petite sirah in the barrels have not picked up enough oak for our tastes, so we’re going to leave them for another year. I realized I haven’t cleaned out the airlocks on my carboys […]
I’ve been meaning to set up a free SO2 aeration/oxidation (A/O) system for a while to test our wines. I’ve mentioned before that the “quick tests” are difficult to read (especially for red wines, since it relies on a color change in the purple range) and are notoriously inaccurate.ย From the information I could find, […]