Making Wine, In Less Time
Last Sunday found me back in Cupertino, working on more Bonfire Vineyards wine. This time, I knew exactly what to do and got to sanitizing the tools and containers right away. The plan was to press the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Syrah. The first was a batch of grapes from Los Altos Hills, near to but not technically Santa Cruz Mountains fruit. Almost as interesting as the location of the vineyards is the situation in which they were procured. The grower did not charge for the grapes and instead made the deal that Bonfire Vineyards would make the wine and give him half. The cellar rat brought Thomas Fogarty’s vineyard manager with him to determine the time for picking, as the grower wanted it done too soon. However, they did talk him into holding off another week for about half of the fruit. As we pressed the two batches individually, it was easy to taste the differences between the two. The first pick was much harsher and more green/vegetal. I think the guys were going to barrel them separately to chart the progress along the way, then blend the final product. But they did that Thursday night while I worked late, so maybe a comment will tell us what actually happened. (BK?)
We also pressed a bin of Syrah from Coyote Creek. The sad thing about that was that it reminded me there will be no Barbera this year, and Fuel is my favorite of the Bonfire Vineyards wines. Now, I’m sure the Syrah will be tasty, and the juice was a lovely color and already showed great flavor. I just can’t help getting a little depressed when thinking there won’t be any labels with red gas cans this go round. Somehow, even though we were pressing about the same amount of grapes as we did last month, we were done over two hours earlier. Perhaps it was because we didn’t go through the long tasting from the previous time, and there weren’t as many people hanging around and wanting to ‘help.’ It was still a long day, though, especially after the party the night before and my looong week at work. I made a quick meal for BK and myself and we put our tired feet up, happy for a hard day’s work to be done.
For the wine nerd in me, it’ll be super exciting to taste the finished product down the road and know that my labor helped make it. And while I would never ask for payment, I can only hope I might be granted the opportunity to taste it once it’s done!
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POSTED IN: Bonfire Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, winemaker to watch
3 opinions for Making Wine, In Less Time
john witherspoon
Dec 23, 2007 at 9:11 am
looks like a good workout! :)
ANd it sounds like a lot of fun.
Happy Holidays!
Farley
Dec 23, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Correct on both counts….
Happy holidays to you, too!
BK
Dec 29, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Sorry for the late response… We did not blend the 1st and 2nd pick Los Altos cab. We will see both of them through to bottling before we blend them together, unless something unexpected happens that forces us to blend sooner. The 2nd pick was not really up to par, even though we gave it more time on the vine. It is tasting better than we expected at this point, but it still tastes funky. This is a very difficult time to predict blends as all the wines are in transition, and we don’t want to spoil a good batch with one that might be bad. Stayed tuned and we’ll reveal the outcome soon enough (in 2009 or 10!)
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