CPWine

Labels... are on.

2007-02-26T19:35:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday the naked bottles of Quattro and Rockfish Red finally got covered. It was a long, uneventful day. Labeling already full bottles, called "shiners," is frankly anticlimatic. We know how the wine tastes now. There was no anticipation and no welcome feeling of putting the vintage to bed. The wine's been in bed for weeks, getting it's beauty sleep. No, the labeling process was all the work, plus some, with no dramatic climax. I really appreciate the help from Dan, Roberto, Trey, Susan, Daniel, and Jose-Luis all that much more. Can't wait for next time.

Speaking of, next bottling is March 12. We'll put the 2006 Viognier and A6 "to bed." Also, a very limited release of Riesling made in a fairly dry style. I'm tweaking all the wines right now, but they're all pretty good. I think the 2006 whites are fairing better, generally, than the reds. All the rain during September affected the October harvested reds ripening. Sure, the rain diluted the September harvest whites, but the flavors from the warm summer are pushing through. Hopefully that will be true of the reds with time.

I'm putting up our new winery sign. I think I mentioned earlier that hooligans stole our original sign. The new one is identical, but I plan on making it a bit tougher to snatch. Did you know you can buy bear traps on Ebay?

Bottle Neck

2007-02-07T09:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we bottled the 2007 Quattro and Rockfish Red. It is great to have them in bottle. Unfortunately, we did not LABEL the bottles yesterday. There is always something that can go wrong. Yesterday it was the labelling machine's turn to foul the works. We use a mobile bottling line to bottle. This is a trailer that contains a trillion dollars worth of high-tech Italian bottling equipment... just begging to break down. Joe, the bottling line owner is phenomenal, and I don't blame him for a second. There is just a lot that can go wrong on the line. The malfunction yesterday was at the bottle sensing motherboard that tells the machine "put a label on now." Just wouldn't work. Joe tried to fix it, but with weather coming (4 inches of snow last night), I decided to get the wine in bottle. Now, we'll need to run all the cases back through the machine when the labeler is working in a couple of weeks. No worries on the availablity this weekend of the two wines though. We have a high-tech hand labeler at Cardinal Point named Sarah. Speaking of, thanks very much to Sarah, Jodie, Christine, Roberto, David, Bob, Bill, Susan, and Trey for working the bottle line yesterday. And thank you to Mom for helping out and giving me a birthday cake during lunch. That was really nice!

2007-02-03T09:16:00.000-05:00

Saturday and there's work to do. Bottling is coming up on February 6. That's this Tuesday. The forecast temperature for Tuesday: 20F! This will add some extra effort to the bottling campaign. The mobile bottling line sets up outside on the crush pad. I'll need to keep the empty bottles inside until the last second they are needed. Essentially temperature management of the bottles, wine, and bottling line trailer is necessary so that the labels will stick to the bottle. It's all about condensation. So, though not insurmountable, our finite space in the winery will require a lot of forethought and muscle in order to make this a smooth bottling. Plus, it'll be damn cold!

The best wine appreciation article I've read in years:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/potato_chip_connoisseur_detects

2007-01-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

Today I hit the ground running. Well, sort of... first I need to spend some time blogging while I enjoy a fresh baked biscuit and cup of coffee and avoid going out the door into the cold, cold world. Seriously, I have loads to do this week. Today I must filter the Quattro so I can have it ready to bottle a week from now. I'm still working to soften the finish and filtering may help. I also must clean off the crush pad today. We bottle out on the pad, but any day this week I will receive ten pallets of bottles. I'll need all the room on the pad just to unload the bottle with the fork lift. I'll need to put them inside, and I'm not sure how that will happen. Fortunately last Friday we had a winery clean-up day. Almost everyone who works here showed up to straighten up the winery, like an early spring cleaning. I took it as a passive/aggressive scream to keep my space clean, but I also really appreciate the help. Thank you, all! The place looks great. I should be able to find space for the in-coming bottles.

I forgot to mention last blog some new features at the winery. The wine bar in the tasting room has been extended and resurfaced. We can handle many more people now, especially those weekend rushes. You can check it out pictures in the February issue of Nelson County Life, but, as a teaser, it's not done yet. Also, outdoors, I built a walking bridge across the little creek next to the stage. I hope to make some trails through our woods for casual hikes. At the very least, the bridge should help keep the kids dry during our concerts... maybe.

2007-01-26T08:22:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back. Not that I went anywhere other than Procrastinationville. My last blog was in early November and now it's late January. Not too much has transpired. We have a new kitten. The country has a new congress. The world has a new year.

In the winery, I've been preparing two wines for bottling on February 6th: the 2006 Quattro and the 2006 Rockfish Red. The Quattro has a slightly larger percentage of Gewurtztraminer than last year but otherwise is usual foursome of Riesling, Gewurtz., Viongier, and Traminette. Despite the pending bottle date, I'm still working the wine. The aroma is great, but the finish isn't as smooth as I'd like. I'm hoping to"fine" that out. I'm pretty sure the wine will relax and soften the finish on it's own with time, but I'll feel better toning it down a bit now. The Rockfish Red (RR) is all Cabernet Franc. I first made this wine last year. I aimed at an easy finishing, low tannic red. It was fermented and aged in steel. This year the aim's the same, but the wine did see some time in barrel. I think I mentioned tank juggling in an earlier blog. I have a finite amount of wine tanks to use and I needed the tank the RR was using. Barrels are convenient temporary storage vessels though not without some flavor/aroma significance. I'm really happy with the RR. I strived to keep the finish soft and approachable. It seems to me to have Burgundian character, in a way.

Yesterday I was in Richmond, lending my hand to the effort to allow wholesale self-distribution by Virginia farm wineries. As most of you know this has been a struggle. Farm wineries had been allowed to self-distribute directly to restaurants and retailers since the inception of the Virginia Farm Winery Act back around 1980. This allowed small wineries to grow their wholesale business without sharing the slim profit margin with a distributor, a middle man. Typically, as the winery's business grew, the need for a distributor to handle the wholesale business became desirable for logistical reasons. The winery would then sign-up with a distributor to take care of warehousing, deliveries, etc... Well, this was a great set-up, but ultimately illegal. About 18 months ago, Federal courts decided that this practice was unfair as wineries outside Virginia did not have the same distribution ability. It wasn't a level playing field and, therefore, against the Commerce clause of the Constitution. Last summer Virginia wineries lost the right to self-distribute. Quickly wineries either made plans with distributors or just stopped their whloesale practice. Signing on with a distributor, especially when you don't have economy of scale like most new winery start-ups, eats into, if not devours, profit margins. Also, a producer/distributor contract is literally tighter than marriage, and an unhappy relationship can lead to a failed winery business with no chance for divorce.
As always, ultimately the consumer pays for all of this, with higher bottle prices and less selection.

Stay with me, though. THERE SEEMS TO BE A SOLUTION! The problem has been that the distributors, naturally, did not want to give up any of their government given rights as mandated middlemen. They must get a cut of every bottle you drink thanks to our representatives. Right or wrong, if I were them, I'd do the same thing. They fought any solution our side came up with on the grounds that it weakened the Three Tier System (TTS: When it comes to alcohol you can be a producer, a distributor, or a retailer, but no business can be on more than one "tier." The exception has been Farm wineries and the result has been phenomenal. Six wineries in the state in 1980 has grown to over 110 wineries in just 26 years thanks to the Farm Wine Act). The distributors have been around since the repeal of Prohibition and have many friends in government. Our still nascent Virginia wine industry has little to compete politically with them. Except of course for people probably like you. A grassroots effort was started to help Virginia wineries. The legislators heard it. It wasn't deafening, but it was constant and consistent. I think I heard described as "the mosquito factor." I like that. Anyway, some forward thinking representatives like Del. Saxman and Sen. Hanger came up with a novel idea, made wineries and distributors sit down together, and I think we now have a solution that we all can live with.

Here's how it will work: The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) will form a distributorship. Farm wineries can join this distributorship and distribute up to 3000 cases through this distributor. Simplified, the winery will set up a leased bonded space for the VDACS Dist. The winery can go to a restaurant or shop and make a sale. The order is sent electronically into VDACS. They issue the paperwork (FW; invoice) and the wine can then be delivered. There will be a cost for this service (and it is unknown right now), but it is expected to be much lower than the typical 30% a distributor commands. Plus, the winery will be able to terminate the agreement with VDACS at any time. I've been told this concept is constitutional as Virginia already is in the Alcohol business with the ABC stores, and has passed muster in court challenges for this. Apparently, the Attorney General agreed, as well.

This system isn't perfect, but it should allow small wineries to grow and succeed. It should also allow consumers access to more wines they want at a fairer price. This Bill has only made it through sub-committee, though, and will need to go to full committee, the House floor, the state Senate, and then on to the Governor. It is not a done deal, and your continued encouragement of your representative is needed. There seems to be bi-partisan support and both the Virginia Wineries Association and the Distributors seem to be happy. Let's hope this holds up.

In reporting this, I do not want to imply credit for anything. The Virginia Wineries Association has had a strong presence this year in Richmond lead by Anne Heidig of Lake Anna Winery and David King of King Family. The wineries' long-time political leader Terri Bierne has worked tirelessly for years,... and literally up to the last second in sub-committee last night! Many winery people have driven to Richmond to speak with representatives. Many growers have as well, lead by the Virginia Vineyards Association president Rock Stevens. Grape growers need the wineries to succeed to succeed. Retailers, hospitality, the Farm Bureau, and county representatives have all helped the wineries in this cause. Del.s Saxman and Albo have been instrumental in introducing legislation to achieve the goal. Indeed the distributors need to be gratefully thanked for working out and implementing a solution we likely all can live with. And the most important help has come from all the voices of friends of Virginia wine (mosquitoes) who contacted their state representatives. Thank you very much!

I'll try to be more timely with these blogs. Feel free to hassle me into writing. -- Tim

Nouveau-to-go

2006-11-02T17:57:00.000-05:00

On November 16th the "plan" is to release our first wine of the 2006 vintage, our Nouveau Red. That is the same day that Beaujolais nouveau is released in Paris and all over France and the world. Yep, that's the plan. I should be able to make it. This year I actually have the bottles on hand (arrived today), I have the labels ordered (half will be ready to hand label bottles the day before release), the corks and caps are ready to go. Oh, yeah, the wine. Well, that's coming along. Pushing a wine like this, and, honestly, I'm pushing, is a pretty interesting exercise in winemaking. The effects of fining, filtering, temperature, CO2 levels, anything that is manipulated is immediately obvious. Not always great, but obvious. Too soon to comment on the wine too much, but it does have that young, juicy-fruit aroma of French nouveau. I'll keep you devoted readers in the loop.

I have just two tanks still fermenting, a Cab franc and our Cabernet sauvignon. The Cab S. cold soaked for several days which means it was kept chilled, delaying the start of alcohol ferment with yeast. This is to extract color and flavor without too much tannic astringency. I can still increase tannin extraction later by leaving the must on skins for a while (extended maceration), but it's good to get the color up front.

Man, it feels good to have all the fruit off the vines. I picked up a cold for the last week of harvest and pretty much exhausted myself, but that happens to all winemakers, I bet. Long days, stress, and cold wet cellars are not what the doctor ordered. I'm lucky I didn't get pneumonia, I guess.

I have been spending nights lately on eBay, cruising for snowboard deals. I bought some boots and I'm going to bum a board off a friend, but I need bindings. Anyone know a good, cheap source? I have plans to ski or ride a lot this winter. That's the other "plan." I think both may be a little wishful, but without plans, nothing would happen.

2006-10-24T08:37:00.000-04:00

The past two weeks or so have gone by too fast. The urgency of the work has subsided, thankfully, but the amount is still up there. The Cabernet Franc, picked and referred to last blog, has been destemmed, fermented, and pressed-off. It currently sits in a settling tank and will be put into barrels today. I'm really happy with the wine so far. Of note, it came in with botrytis. Botrytis is a fungal pathogen, disease, often referred to as "noble rot." Readers may recall that the Chardonnay this year was rife with botrytis. In whites, the disease can increase flavor and sugar levels. It can also lead to secondary infections like sour rot and ripe rot (rots are never good). Reds face the same issues plus the botrytis can cause a large build-up of laccase. Laccase actually reverses color stability. When this happens in reality, the juice starts out with pretty good color only to, day by pitiful day, lose the color and start to resemble a color I can only think to call khaki. Not cool. Fortunately I took some preventive actions which all basically tie-up any laccase. The results worked. The Franc isn't inky, but the color is very good.

I have a small amount of Petit Verdot in this year. It is inky and wonderful. I have more P.V. coming into fruit each year in the vineyard and I'm excited about the potential. Eventually I'll probably make a varietal label Petit Verdot, but for now I'll use it for blending.

The Nouveau is almost ready to start preparing for bottle. The fruit in a nouveau goes through carbonic maceration (CM). Simply, red wine is made by destemming and crushing grapes and then fermenting the juice AND the fruit together. The color for red wine is in the skin and during fermentation, the color is released from the skin as the cell walls are broken down by alcohol. With CB, whole clusters are placed in a vat that is full of carbon dioxide. The CO2 diffuses into the individual cell walls, expanding the cell and bursting it open, thus releasing the color. After a while the CM fruit is pressed and then traditional alcohol fermentation is started to finish the wine. The resultant wine has low tannins and unique flavors. This is the method used to make Beaujolais nouveau in France. Our release date for the Nouveau is the same as the traditional date in France, the third Thursday of November. This year that is November 16. I need to get my butt in gear. I'm pretty sure the Beaujolites didn't have us in mind, but nouveau in my opinion is great with Thanksgiving turkey.

Today we start the end of harvest. The Cabernet Sauvignon will finally come off the vine. I really love this block of vines. They are well behaved, meaning they grow to the top of the trellis and stop. There isn't a lot of excess growth which leads to canopy management problems and vegetative issues in the wine. The berries are small and dark. Small berries are desirable because most of the flavor and all of the color are in the skin layer. The smaller the berry the larger the skin-to-juice ratio per berry. I have high hopes for this years vintage. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Jeff, Julie, Tammie, Deb, Dan, Lisa, Stuart, my cousin Nancy's daughter and her boyfriend, and mostly my sister Sarah for the great work at the Town Point festival in Norfolk over the weekend. It was chilly but a huge success. Thanks also to Michael, Laura, Val, Kim, and Roberto for the hard work in the tasting room while everyone else was gone. In addition harvest and festivals, fall is also the busiest time of year for the tasting room. The festivals are over for the year (well, excepting our own Oyster Fest 11/11 and 11/12) and harvest is winding down. Our workers have preformed fantastic!
Thanks to everyone for dropping by the winery.

October 12. 2006

2006-10-12T20:38:00.000-04:00

Sad news today. Daniel, my main vineyard guy, and his crew were picking Cabernet Franc when he received word from Mexico that his father had died. His father had been ill for a while, but had seemed to turn the corner. Still, Daniel was planning on going down for a visit as soon as harvest was over. Daniel was predictably devastated. He has often told me about his hometown, the house he's building there, and his father. I think losing his dad is especially tough because he's losing even more connection with "home." Incredibly, the crew finished the pick while Daniel made some phone calls. Daniel even returned to picking the fruit. They finished harvesting about five tons around noon. Daniel called me from Richmond later in the afternoon where he was catching a flight to Mexico City. He'll get there midnight tonight and he hopes to make it to his hometown by 7AM. His dad's funeral is tomorrow. It's amazing how fast everything can change.

Since the last post, the viognier that I was expecting Friday or Saturday showed up Sunday, delayed due to rain. I pressed over seven tons on Sunday. Monday I was mostly running around delivering bins and lugs to pick into. Tuesday the crew picked Cab Franc from two different vineyards. I crushed all the fruit as it came in, about 4 tons total. Some of it will be used for our nouveau, most for Cab franc wines. The color and flavors are quite good. Yesterday, Wednesday, I cleaned up the winery and reorganized. For my next trick I will juggle stainless steel wine tanks. As all the fruit comes in and becomes wine, it also takes up space. You need tanks to settle juice, ferment, and age wine. Eventually, tank space starts to become precious and that's where I am now. I literally have to think two weeks ahead to plan out what will go where and when. I kind of like it as long as it works out. It's like those plastic puzzles we had as kids with moving tiles that you had to slide and switch around to complete the picture of a clown or the periodic table.

I enjoyed yesterday, getting everything prepped (Tip: when starting a winery, whatever you decide is the largest tank you need, get TWO! You will need to rack, or move wine off lees, from one tank to another, and if your biggest tank is full, you'll need another one the same size or it's twice the work. Today was going to be relatively easy, not too much to do but pick up lugs. I was looking forward to it.

Les Miserables

2006-10-06T16:42:00.000-04:00

Not all that long ago I was a vineyard consultant. I met many people who wanted to put in grapes and were excited by the prospect. I would meet them at their land and go over what was involved in terms of sweat and cash. I also tried to convey the level of stress that comes into play. It was usually a warm spring day or a clear autumnal afternoon. I think I was always able to get them to appreciate the amount of work that was necessary and the hefty expenses vineyards require, but I rarely conveyed the heart-break that is all too possible by investing yourself in grapes...

Today, Friday, October 6, 2006, it is raining like mad. I don't know the actual amount of rain yet, but judging by the flooding in the roads, we have received over three inches now. Daniel's crew was supposed to be picking some viognier for me today and tomorrow. The rain made it impossible to pick today; I'm afraid tomorrow is in jeopardy as well. They will be able to pick on Sunday, hopefully, but next week they are booked everyday to pick for other vineyards. We'll see what happens. This is grape growing in Virginia. Everything can be going right just to have your whole crop in peril the day it is to be picked. In this case, the fruit should be fine. There is little doubt, though, that it won't be as good as it could have been yesterday. We growers in Virginia are more at the whim of nature than most viticultural areas. Europe gets rains but not the regular hurricanes that rumble through here. Australia and California have drought, but that's an asset in winegrowing. Our drought is followed be deluges they rarely have. We get hail here like Chile and Argentina, but we also get spring frosts.

We had a weekend of heavy rain last year during harvest, too. We frequently get rain like this during harvest. Regardless, it always is stressful. Heavy rain, disease, frost... None are romantic, but they are part of the romantic idea of vineyard ownership.

We call this time of year "crush" as it is when we crush the grapes into wine. It also makes sense because who can recall a crush without heart-break.

More...

2006-10-02T20:11:00.000-04:00

Friday I picked up a U-Haul trailer to take cases of wine to Leesburg for the wine festival we were participating in. U-Haul locations used to be everywhere, but no more. The nearby garage stopped offering them a year ago. Though there are two listed U-Haul outlets in Crozet, neither are functioning. In Waynesboro there is a still a u-haul place, but they didn't have the trailer I needed, of course. So, I picked up a trailer in Charlottesville. Tip: Spend the extra $5/day and get the double axle trailer rather than the smaller single axle trailers. It handles more weight and is far more stable on the road. After driving back and picking up 65 cases, I headed up to Leesburg. The festival grounds were a bit damp and my four wheel drive is out on the F250 (Wasn't I raving about it last week?). Plus the tents were tightly spaced. All this lead to me having to schlep all the cases, four at a time, about 40 yards to our space. No one thinks of this when they are dreaming of opening a winery. After getting things squared away, I hit the road for home. This was about 3:45pm in Northern Virginia on a Friday! Dumb plan. Traffic was no problem, at least to my fellow motorists at least. They all look docile and content. To me it was intolerable. It took one and a half hours to go thirty miles. Well, I didn't press any fruit when I came home though I did busy myself with wine.

Actually, that night, my wife Susan hosted a cast party for the play in which she and my son Sam just starred. "Two tales from the Twilight Zone" by Earl Hamner of Walton's fame. Well, they were stars in my opinion. It was a good party. Not the first cast party I have crashed, though.

Saturday I finished pressing the Chardonnay. It tastes pretty good considering the tough year it's been for the variety. I'm going to do the primary ferment in a steel tank so I can better control the fermentation rate and temperature. In the past I had fermented in barrels exclusively. I'm hoping to pull out more fruit notes by keeping the ferment slow and steady and off wood. Then I will put the wine into barrel for aging. This technique should lead to the use of better quality lees, but more on that later.

Sunday morning I headed back up to Leesburg with six more cases of wine. I worked the festival which was busy but not too bad. Apparently Saturday had been at least twice as bad and Sarah had fewer helpers. There are no easy jobs in wine. Turned out we could have sold even more. I always like to say "sorry, we're sold out," though. Drove home Sunday night, trailer in tow. Stopped at Five Guys for dinner. I love Five Guys. Tip: Get the "little," single burger. It's plenty big, and the double burger is so beefy you can't taste the toppings. Another tip: Order the regular size fries, not the large. You get more than you need. And put the malt vinegar on 'em.

Today, Monday, I returned the trailer to Charlottesvile. It was cheaper than I though. Just $75. Then I racked the pressed Chardonnay over to a clean tank. Racking is when wine or juice is allowed to settle out solids to the bottom of its tank and then the clear liquid above is moved to another vessel, leaving the solids behind. It's a means of clarifying. In this case it is done to improve the quality of the ferment and keep off odors from becoming a problem. You can get juice too clear, though. Some of those solids are necessary for yeast nutrition and without enough you run the risk of a fermentation problem. We'll see if I guessed right. I pitched the yeast in and now the wine should be on the way.

Quick Update

2006-09-28T20:14:00.000-04:00

Sorry for not posting the past few days. I am deep in harvest now and time, motivation, and energy are all short at the end of the day. My problem now is that I can't even recall what I did on Monday. This is Thursday! Focus, Tim...

Okay here's a quick synopsis of the week so far.

Monday: I welded up some new hooks for the Lugger tool (see earlier post). I broke one of the original prototypes which was probably 12 years old. The new ones are beefy and work great. I really need to market these things... Then I cleaned lugs. I used a pressure washer to loosen and a big bin of water to rinse with excellent and fast results. I was cleaning 5 lugs per minute on average. That's pretty fast which is good as it is a miserable job. Then the Karcher brand pressure washer broke. I've used it like 3 times... I put the lugs out in the vineyard preparing for harvest on Tuesday.

Tuesday: Daniel and crew, 8 all together, picked 5 tons of chardonnay. This fruit was for me just as a change of pace (joke). They had to leave a lot of fruit on the vine due to rot, probably 25%. There are lots of kinds of rot. This year, at Cardinal Point anyway, there has been near perfect conditions for botrytis, or "noble rot." Botrytis is a fungal disease that usually infects grapes in the late ripening stage. It can lead to complete loss of a crop. It is not all that bad though. On its own, botrytis infected grapes develop pleasing flavors and actually increase in sugar because the fungi dehydrate the berries. The pathogen can cause enological (wine making) problems, especially with red varieties, but with care, can actually make wines superior compared to unifected lots, hence "noble rot". Botrytis, though can also lead to secondary rots, ripe rot, sour rot, and others, that smell and taste terrible. So, the fruit came in looking, well, bad, covered with brown, furry botrytis and who knows what else. It did not smell bad, though. There's hope...Later I took the Karcher pressure washer back to Lowe's and they gave me a new one!

Wednesday: We, Roberto and I, pressed out the Chardonnay picked on Tuesday. Many wineries sort their fruit before going pressing. This is a great concept. The idea is to pick out the bad clusters, berries, or bird nests before they are squished into wine. In practice this is can be tough to do. First, it is is difficult to find "sorters," people who do the sorting. Usually a winery uses their picking crew to sort. I find this funny. You pay a crew to pick fruit and then ask them to take out the stuff you don't want. I just ask them not to pick the stuff I don't want. Plus, it's tough to get people to sort when others need them to pick. More difficult is deciding what to sort. I know of a winery that sorted one bin out of six bins of fruit. On a lark, they pressed and vinified the ugly, sorted fruit. As you might guess by now, the "sorted" wine was far superior, full of flavor, rich with complexity. Don't get me wrong. Sorting can be a great tool. In this case, though, with my botrysized chardonnay, it wouldn't have. I wouldn't know what to pick out without snorting and tasting every berry. The infected fruit is very tender and the first juice to come out of the press are these easily pressed grapes. In this instance, this first, "free run" juice was remarkably sweeter than the juice later in the press run. I honestly feel that if sorted, we could easily have second guessed ourselves and thrown away some great flavor. In short, we pressed the 5 tons. Also I picked up 1.25 tons of Traminette from Dave Dexter (for the Quattro) which we also pressed... In the afternoon between press runs, I scrubbed lugs. I couldn't use the new Karcher pressure washer because the brand new replacement unit from Lowe's came with a broken on/off switch. It was along day.

Thursday: Today was the last day of our Chardonnay harvest. We took off almost 7 tons to be divide between CP and another winery. Bob Hughes came out again, thankfully. I'd have been crushed by myself. The crew was so fast today. They were done by noon. Bob was picking up all the lugs. He worked his butt off. We had the luxury of dumping the lugs into bins (big plastic boxes, 4'x4') right in the vineyard row. The purchasing winery guys then brought over a trailer that my feeble tractor's front loader struggled to place the bins on. It occurred to me after filling about 6 bins that if my front loader broke that day, I'd be screwed. 800# boxes of pure grape mass with no where to go. Its true of a lot of the equipment. If the fork lift goes down, I can't press or crush grapes. If the wine pump breaks, I really can't do anything. Well, this time nothing broke and we sent the grapes off happily.

That afternoon I lost my wallet. I needed to rent a U-haul trailer to take some wine to a festival in Leesburg on Friday. I couldn't do it because I didn't have my wallet. I had to get the wine there Friday morning because in the afternoon and evening, I need to press some more chardonnay. I felt like the simplest thing was keeping me from getting anything done. It is frustrating and depressing. It wasn't catastrophic like an exploding forklift, but it was as effective. I lost about three hours of productive time before finding the clever wallet hiding behind our hamper. I did find some long lost sunglasses, though.

Bauhaus "r" Us

2006-09-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

I received a kind email from David Carnes, vineyard manager at Windham winery in Hillsboro, Virginia. David was dropping off wine for our mutually-used distributor on Friday and it was his first visit to Cardinal Point. In his email, referring to our architecture, he says "Cardinal Point has a hipness to it" and "Who can't make a winery look pretty with money? There's no challenge in that and the Napa look has been done to death." I appreciate the comment because including my wine and vine work, I also did a lot of the construction. Indeed the whole family was involved. My brother is an architect in Charlottesville and he came up with the useful design and clever layout of our buildings. Sure, they're just pre-engineered metal structures, but I think they're understatedly cool. My sister Sarah, who runs all our business operations, has final say on interior design. My parents bought, installed, and maintain our flower boxes. They also just had our gutters fixed which were damaged by ice flows of the winery roof several winters ago. I built the tasting room bar, did a lot of the painting. This year I designed and built a canopy system over the terrace. I like it and think it fits our "industrial/pastoral" look.

There is a saying in the industry:"If you want to make a little money in the wine business, start with a lot." Well, we are not paupers, but we, my family, started our winery with a lean business model by necessity. From the start we wanted to make a comfortable place to visit, but we knew that putting resources toward making the best wine we could was most important. Sure, I'm envious of deep-pocketed wineries, but I do like our little winery. (Cue violins). My family has been 100% behind this endeavor, my friends encouraging, our staff has been terrific, and the customers have kept it fun. I'm confident that eventually we'll realize all the dreams I have for this place (Google Kroller-Muller Museum for insight). It's going to take time, but it's the journey not the destination.

On practical matters, Friday I took some berry samples from a viognier vineyard I'm getting grapes from. They look perfect and the fruit is slowly ripening which I prefer. Looks like we'll pick that in two weeks or so. I'm getting ready for our own Chardonnay to come in next week, starting Tuesday. It was supposed to rain last night and today but so far so good, no rain!
Next weekend we are going to a big wine festival up in northern Virginia. It is causing lots of logistical problems. I'm going to have to figure out how to harvest and press AND how to get wine to Leesburg on Friday. Whoever decided to put wine festivals in the middle of harvest is a moron.

Bob did it again.

2006-09-21T18:26:00.000-04:00

Bob Hughes, Charlottesville's Superstar Realtor, was my guest harvest-helper today. Bob has worked on bottling days in the winery several times as have many friends. This, however, was Bob's second day helping harvest inthe vineyard of this still young 2006 crush (period of time when grapes are picked and made into wine). In fact he picked 16 lugs of riesling himself. That's a tough grape to start out on and a respectable quantity. Further, he now has my proprietary Lug Retrieval System (LRS) down pat. I drive the tractor down the rows with a hydraulic lift platform on the back. Bob walks behind picking up lugs, stacking them in 6 columns, 6 high until we get a half ton of fruit. Guess who has the hard job? The fully loaded platform is driven to an elevated cold room. We then slide individual stacks of six lugs into the cold room by using a proprietary tool, The Lugger. The Lugger is basically a modified hook on a stick with a D-handle on the end. The slider just puts the hook under the lip of the lowest lug in the stack, lifts up slightly and backs in the desired direction. Sounds silly, but it works and it's a lot better and faster than restacking 1000# of grapes everytime you put them in cold storage.

The cold room is an important tool for a vineyard. By cooling down the grapes you slow enzymatic degradation. Basically, the fruit stays sound longer. Also chilling leads to clearer juice at the press and better clarifying after the juice is in a settling tank. Chilling can buy a day or two at the outside before processing the fruit is necessary. This isn't much but it does lend some flexibility. We made our cold room from an old shipping container. It looks like a semi-trailer without wheels. I insulated it myself and had a local refrigeration company put in a "reefer" unit. When I was starting out I'll admit I was taken aback when other growers asked if I had a reefer.

The crew picked two tons today. Thankfully Daniel and Josefina stayed after the picking to wash lugs. We'll be ready for the next picking day which I think will be next Tuesday. In addition to picking up the two tons, Bob and I delivered grapes to two different wineries. Plus we picked up new wine glasses at nearby Veritas Winery. The glasses had to be delivered there because I was off making deliveries and I had the keys to fork lift. Veritas unloaded them and then loaded up my truck using their fork lift. Thanks Veritas (www.veritaswines.com)! It is great to have friendly and helpful neighbors.

Tomorrow I need to concentrate on some winemaking, walk through some vineyard blocks, and take some berry samples to determine where we are now.

More Chard...

2006-09-20T21:03:00.000-04:00

Today we resumed the Chardonnay harvest. Big picking day, though. I'm selling this fruit as well and won't know the true weight until it's pressed, but I figure we picked over 7 tons. I was helped by Roberto "Pacho" Priani. Roberto met and married a neighbor and employee of ours, Kyla Saby. They met while Kyla was studying in Mexico. They now have a baby boy named after his father, but goes by Bear for short. Roberto was a huge help, as always. He also works in the tasting room and does an excellent job. We have one rule in the tasting room: Be nice to the visitors. Roberto gets it. He is very charming and has become remarkably well versed in wine in a short period of time.

All the fruit was picked up today by the buyer except for one ton. I will deliver that ton in the morning. It will make time a little tight, but you have to stay flexible during harvest and hustle when necessary. Also tomorrow we'll pick a couple of tons going to yet another winery, this one close by. I'll deliver this in a couple of truck loads with my F-250. For aspiring vineyardists, get a 3/4 ton truck with a full size bed. Don't waste money and frazzle your nerves with a 1/2 ton. Grapes weigh a lot. I had a 1/2 ton Chevy for 10 years and transporting grapes was always a white knuckle experience. The weight really beat the thing down, too. The better suspension on a 3/4 truck means I hardly notice the cargo now.

Both the in-tank Riesling and Gewurtztraminer were given yeast nutrient today. This is like vitamins for the yeast so they stay healthy and the fermentation can complete. As you know, yeast chews up sugar and, well, "releases" alcohol and carbon dioxide. As the amount of sugar drops, the level of alcohol increases. Most wine yeasts are tolerant of pretty high alcohol levels, but high alcohol environments can be stressful. Just come to one of our family reunions for proof. Anyway, keeping the yeast in shape gives it strength to persevere and avoid all kinds of problems which I'm sure I'll address later.

Last night I tasted both of our recent bottlings, the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon and the Cabernet Franc Reserve. Both need some time, well, more time in bottle. I think the CFR is closer to release. It opens up well once it has been in glass for a while. We sold out of the 2004 Cab Sauvignon this past weekend. It's a good problem, but we have been sort of rushed to get our reds to market as we sell out earlier vintages. I like the idea that some newer wineries are doing of cellaring reds two and even three years prior to the expected winery opening date. That gives you an aged red right off the bat and time to age current vintages as well. Hindsight, right?

Deliverance

2006-09-19T21:20:00.000-04:00

Today's delivery of Chardonnay to a winery a couple of hours north was mercifully uneventful. Man, the truck was really nice, though. Even carrying an estimated 3.34 tons of fruit, it handled like my Accord?. It had a powered lift gate which made the loading and delivery a snap. And the diesel for the whole trip (about 160 miles) was less than $30.

Still, deliveries eat up time. As it turned out no rain fell today. Once home I had to rinse out dirty lugs to prepare for tomorrow's pick. I was really counting on the rain to soften up the grape debris - skins, leaves, twigs - that get stuck, neigh cemented, inside a lug thanks to the grape juice. Ideally one would rinse lugs immediately after they are emptied, but I'm often a one man operation which is far from ideal (though usually preferred). Anyway, rain softens up the juice "glue" and then you can just thump the lug upside down on the tailgate bed to release the detritus (crap) as you load them in the truck to take to the pickers. So even when it doesn't rain, Mother Nature lets me down. My mother-in-law told my wife: "Never marry a farmer." Is it because we're never happy or just that she dislikes me?

Tomorrow we will be trying to pick up to nine tons of Chardonnay for yet another winery. They will be picking up from me so that will save time. Still, that's a lot of fruit and there is bound to be some crisis to relate. Wish me luck and stay tuned.

2¢

2006-09-19T07:23:00.000-04:00

So, yesterday I pick up the rental truck. It's huge but handles awesome, honestly. I got it from Penske in Charlottesville. Since I was in C-ville, I stopped by Old Navy to get some t-shirts. Okay, yes, these shirts are incredibly cheap. They're on sale for about $1.93 each. BUT, THEY'RE ALL PRE-WORN. Soft, yes. Pre-washed, yes. FRAYED AT THE EDGES? MOTH EATEN? YES! When I was in college, and even after, and even today, I shopped thrift stores all the time looking for gems. I guess Old Navy is trying to tap into this lucrative market of used clothes. Well, I had a coupon, bought two t-shirts and two casual dress shirts and spent $5.37, including tax. Frayed I'll be going back.

Daily log...

2006-09-18T13:53:00.000-04:00

Today we started picking chardonnay. All grapes at Cardinal Point are picked by hand. Those hands usually belong to Daniel and Josefina Sanchez and the workers that they gather. It is pretty tough work though more mind numbing than muscle aching. The pickers this morning were just harvesting 220 lugs (boxes that stack so fruit isn't crushed) that I will be selling to another winery. Tomorrow rain is forecast so I want to get some fruit in. Plus I'll need to deliver this fruit and I'd rather use a rainy day for delivery as it is a wasted day for any vineyard work.

I have a lot of chardonnay, always more than I need to make wine at Cardinal Point. As I used to grow grapes and sell the fruit to other wineries, I planted more for demand than with the notion that eventually I'd be making wine myself. I planted several blocks of Chardonnay in the 90-'s when demand was high. Ironically, all the chardonnay turned out to be an impetus to go into the wine-making biz. The demand for chardonnay dropped steeply at the turn of the century. Prices were at or below what they had been in 1990. And that was if you could sell your crop at all. I let six tons of fruit rot one year as I could find no buyer. That's about 300 cases of wine! Anyway, grape growing on our scale (15 acres) just to sell fresh fruit is tough going. The profit margins became smaller each year, or the loss margins grew I should say. We needed to find a way to add value to our grapes and wine was a pretty obvious choice.

The lugs picked today probably average about 29# each. That means they picked about 3.2 tons. Starting at 7AM with just six people, they were done at 10:15! That's pretty fast. The clusters this year are larger than normal due to a really good fruit set period this past spring. The fruit itself has been abused by mother nature the past couple of weeks. Lots and lots of rain. There is a fair amount of botrytis (fungal disease that splits berries but can also improve flavor and/or cause vinification problems) but very little sour rot (bad stuff, smells and tastes like vinegar).

In the winery, both the Gewurtztraminer and Riesling are happily fermenting. Both grapes came in last week before I started this blog. The Gewurtz was grown by Dave Dexter about 15 miles south of Cardinal Point. It came in at a little over 3 tons. The Riesling is estate grown and we got over 8 tons which made me happy. Anyway, both have been pressed, settled and racked, and are now slowly fermenting in temperature controlled tanks. I find that the slower I ferment these varieties, well all varieties, the more aromatic expression I get from the resulting wine.

Got to go pick up the rental truck to deliver the grapes. More tomorrow.

Throwing monkeys at Shakespeare...

2006-09-17T08:49:00.000-04:00

Hello and welcome to my first blog posting.

My name is Tim Gorman and I grow the grapes and make the wine on my family's farm, Cardinal Point Vineyard and Winery. The farm and winery are in Afton, Virginia, which is along the Blue Ridge Mountains, just west of Charlottesville. It is a beautiful place and I'm fortunate to live and work here. Like everwhere the days, development is encroaching on our countryside a little, but we're still pretty "out-of-the-way" for most people.

So, my plan for this blog is to convey what is going on in my vineyard and winery on a very regular basis. This should give readers, and hopefully fans of Cardinal Point wines, some sense of what goes into making wine, the problems, successes, and pure serendipity. I'm sure that I won't be very technical nor will I always stay the course, focused on wine. Sometimes you have to tell someone about a good song you've just heard. I work alone most days so it'll be good to have a space to relate my experiences, which are often pretty funny.