My Wednesday appointment was actually with Lee, who was John's local contact in Paso. John had spoken to me a few days and informed me he had to be in Temecula. I found this a little dubious since we had agreed on the date some weeks earlier but he assured me Lee was really my main man anyway. This turned out to be true. In our phone conversation John revealed the high end Santa Rita chardonnay vineyard - it was Presidio, owned by Doug Braun. I had met Doug when the class toured his vineyard, which is certified 100% biodynamic. The tour had been fascinating and Doug is a successful grower and winemaker with deep roots in the area. Unfortunately he has been screwed over by the TTB, as his properly lies directly adjacent to the boundary for the Santa Rita Hills appellation. This means that he's outside the appellation, meaning that I could not put the magic "Santa Rita Hills" moniker on the bottle. I've had his chardonnay and it's excellent - you can really taste the soil (in a good way), but the price tag for the grapes, which was already high for a cash-strapped newbie,  now became too high,

Lee picked me up at my motel around 11:00 on Wednesday. He drives an enormous black SUV, and off we went. Our first stop was a large vineyard near the airport. I was vaguely aware of the existence of Paso Robles Airport but I'd never seen it. It's off in the boonies on the Eastside; the vineyards are slowly closing in on all sides of it. I'm sure when it was built there was not much of anything around except perhaps grazing land and the odd isolated ranch. The airport itself seemed deserted and is only for small private craft.

Lee is a local vineyard manager and has a good handle on the area, which he proved immediately by getting lost. Shortly after turning around and trying a new route he had to stop and pull over. The poor guy was sick and he had to run out in back of his truck and vomit. An inauspicious start. He did seem to feel much better after our unplanned pit stop and explained that it seemed to be a reaction to the medication he had taken for a chronic sore throat. The good news is that his sore throat had disappeared since taking said medication..

After conferring with someone at the winery on his cell phone Lee found the vineyard (ironically the winery and tasting room is on the Westside). The vineyard is a large spread (I think about 130 acres), featuring several varietals. We were looking at Mourvedre and Viognier. Following our visit here the Grenache vineyard was next, which this winery had used but was now dropping. Lee explained to me that the winery was scaling back on its Rhone program, thus grapes were available.

After meandering up and down a few vineyard blocks we found the Mourvedre. There was a post marked MV at the head of the row, so I was certain it was indeed the Mourvedre block but it looked like, yes, most vineyards. The latest in a series. We got out and looked. It all looked fine to me, per usual. The only thing I noticed is the vines had already been cropped a bit and that they were spaced very far apart, which I presumed meant machine harvesting. Lee assured me the fruit would be handpicked however, which as small production craftsman and artisans, we prefer, damnit. There was a sufficiently small amount of the Mourvedre in relation to the size of the vineyard that it was probably the case.

Following the Mourvedre visit we looked at the Viognier in a nearby block. It looked... pretty much the same. No problems I could discern. It was time to check out the Grenache vineyard.

Whereas the West side district is much more hilly and densely forested, Eastside Paso Robles resembles horse country more than wine country. In fact what it looks like is horse country with a lot of vineyards thrown in. The overriding impression I always get when comparing the two is a sense of expansiveness and light - while there are plenty of rolling hills in the east, they don't have may trees on them, whereas the Westside roads (except for the main drag, Highway 46), are filled with towering trees. You still see horse ranches and hay fields on the Eastside, and you also see lots of vineyards, many of them planted very recently.

We rolled into a more or less residential district, which seemed to have originally been oriented towards homeowners who wanted to keep a horse or two on their property. The tracts were very large by residential standards (between 10 and 20 acres it appeared), and some of the intrepid homeowners were clearly more focused on grapes than horses. We rolled up to one of these estates, a typical California ranch house on a hill .surrounded by about 15 acres of vineyards. The Grenache vineyard was on the highest point of the property, situated in front of the house; the rest of the vineyards were on a sloping hill on the perpendicular to the Grenache. The other vineyards comprised Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Petite Sirah, an eclectic mix. I've noticed more and more Petit Verdot around Paso, so I guess maybe some see it as another of those varietals of the future, although I've never discerned all that much personality in the noble old Petit Verdot grape (one of the 5 Bordeaux varietals, originally used to contribute color, spice and tannin I believe). Similarly I've always had a soft spot for Cab Franc, although it's usually found in somewhat cooler climes than Paso (in Bordeaux Cab franc is much more prominent in the cooler climate Right Bank)

The Grenache was well established, planted 10 years ago. It looked, well, it looked fine and indeed well-established, planted East-West to avoid the worst of the scorching late summer heat waves. The vines were bushy and Lee assured me they would be thinned in the weeks to come - he does the vineyard management for this vineyard, known as Longshot.

Okay, vineyard is not dying, looks OK, tour over, let's get some samples. We had arranged to meet the rep from the first vineyard in town. He handed us some barrel samples of the Longshot as well as the Viognier and Mourvedre from the estate and I parted with lee, promising to give him a report on my impressions. Lee was a little concerned about Longshot, as they had the whole production of the vineyard unaccounted for - he asked me several times if I knew anyone else who wanted Grenache. Since just about everyone I know buys fruit by the pound rather than the ton this was unlikely but I assured him I'd ask around.

One of the pleasant surprises I encountered as I toured with Lee was that the fruit here in good old Paso Robles was lower priced than I expected. Having come off a vintage where I paid $1900 a ton for far away fruit from Amador County, and knowing that Santa  Barbara County Rhones commanded over $2000 a ton, I was quite jazzed when Lee told me the grapes I would look at today would be around $1600 a ton.

It was about 2:00 PM so I decide to head off to Cass Winery. Cass had been touted to me by a wine drinking friend who had taken his maiden trip to Paso recently and stumbled onto Cass, where he'd had a good time and in fact joined the wine club, something he doesn't do lightly, even when drunk. I was a little bit tired of playing wine maven; it's time to play tourist. Cass is buried on the Eastside so after a quick lunch near my motel I was back heading Eastward, in the same general direction as Longshot. Vineyard.

To get to Cass you head out on Highway 46 East, one of the three major arteries heading in and out of Paso Robles. About five miles out of town your turn off a side street and travel past the usual Eastside mix of horse farms, vineyards and emptiness. At the end of the road about 3 rolling miles later you hit Cass, a substantial estate off by itself, featuring several acres of vineyards and a large tasting room / winery. Cass is additionally distinguished by having a well-regarded café, as well as the usual gift shop featuring the usual gifts.

I sidled up to the bar and started tasting some wine, something I have much more experience in than sidling up to a vineyard and examining immature berries and trellising strategies. The wines were good and the tasting room was nearly empty; I was relaxed and started quizzing the girl pouring the wines about the winemaking techniques. She was new and didn't know the answers but lo, here comes the winemaker. She was happy to refer my queries to Lood.

Lood is an engaging guy in his mid-twenties with a thick Afrikaner accent. We started yakking about his techniques, which he was proud to share with me and shortly into our conversation he remarked that I seemed to be in the industry. I guess I am, tourist afternoon notwithstanding, so I revealed that I was in Paso looking for 2009 grapes. Lood motioned to a middle aged gent who'd just walked in and said "that's the guy to talk to about grapes." Sure enough it was Steve Cass himself.

After introductions Steve asked what I was looking for. I mentioned that I would love some Sangiovese. I don't know why I said this. I think I wanted to be a little esoteric. There were chuckles all around, and shakes of the head from Lood and Steve. I appended this with my Mourvedre/Grenache quest. Steve didn't know about the Mourvedre but he was fairly certain they would have Grenache for sale. Would I like to try barrel some barrel samples?

Um, OK.

The barrel room is right off the tasting area: Lood and I proceeded next door, Steve remarking he would be joining us shortly. We first tried some Grenache, since that was for sale. It was nice, reminding me a bit of my Amador Grenache, a bit candied but with good acid and, as I'm finding with a lot of Grenache, a bit too pale on the color. The mourvedre was next, a step up in class, very tasty, medium bodied. I decided this one was a keeper, assuming Steve could find me some grapes to sell.

Steve soon joined us, followed by three other winery employees: junior partner Ted, junior partner Ted's wife and Steve's son Brian, who is in charge of the wine club. Lood was soon darting from barrel to barrel, offering us various barrel samples. The tasting session soon evolved into a strategy meeting (the Paso wine festival was coming up in 3 days), and there I was enjoying the wine and listening to everyone talk shop. I was on the inside, both figuratively and literally and I must say it was damn hospitable.

After spending over two hours at Cass I hit a couple of more tasting rooms (4 Vines is open until 6:00, so it tends to be a natural last stop) and returned to my motel room pretty drunk. Actually very drunk. It was time to taste the barrel samples I'd gotten earlier in the day.

First off, the Grenache. This was the one I was most interested in, and possibly the most important wine of the Ritual 2009 vintage. I poured a bit into my complimentary four vines wine glass, looked at the color (pale). Smelled the aroma (nice!). Took a sip. Excellent! Boy, this is good. I was suddenly excited, visions of high scores, international awards and massive acclaim dancing in my fairly addled head. All for an affordable price!

I tasted the Mourvedre: flat. I tasted the Viognier: flat and fizzy, if that's possible. Scott the vineyard manager had warned me that the samples had been pulled two weeks earlier and suggested I get some fresh ones, so this was not a shock. Except that the Grenache kicked ass.

I retasted the Grenache. Earthy and fruity, none of that candied overtone that could be common in California Grenache. Still tasty, I was psyched up. I also realized I was pretty drunk and shouldn't make any hard decisions until I retasted in a more sober and thoughtful frame of mind.

As Thursday morning dawned I realized I was not in the mood to visit more vineyards with Matt Turrentine (or anyone else). He hadn't called so I was presuming it wasn't going to happen. He hadn't checked in since our original

conversation but I felt there was a minor threat of him calling me that morning. He did not, to my relief. Drinking heavily the last two days certainly didn't help my predisposition to take long rides out to distant vineyards - being around a wine area had triggered my basest instincts i.e. drink lots of wine! Perhaps I need to adopt a more "professional" (i.e. sober) approach to these wine country excursions?

I decided I would come back in a week to taste some fresh samples; Lee also had a Viognier vineyard he wanted to show me. I called him the next day and relayed my affection with the Grenache, as well as my disappointment with the other two and confirmed I'd be back in a week to revisit the wines, check out the Viognier, and maybe cut a deal. Lee was happy I liked the Grenache - he's the manager of that vineyard of course, and was only showing me the other one as part of his relationship with Agajanian. He also reiterated that he needed to move the rest of the output of the Grenache vineyard and asked me (once again) if I knew anybody to take the rest of the fruit.

It's about a 3½ hour drive from Los Angeles to Paso Robles. I would be staying at the Paso Robles Travelodge, the cheapest accommodations I could find that did not seem life-threatening. Paso Robles the town has grown considerably since I started visiting on wine tasting excursions in the late 90's, in sync with the explosive growth of Paso Robles the wine appellation. Formerly an area mostly known as cattle country it is now firmly entrenched as a legitimate player in the front ranks of California wine. When I first started going up there it seemed that the great majority of vehicles were pickup trucks, frequently driven by cowboys or farmers of various stripes. There was a core collection of wineries along the various routes, including some very prominent  and well-established producers such as Justin and Peachy Canyon, and a good assortment of various others, including Tobin James (who have the largest wine club in the world - I think Justin is right behind), Eberle (well known Cabernet producer), and many others. So there was never a shortage of places to visit. When I first started to explore Paso the hallmark of the area was high powered zinfandel, frequently accompanied by high powered petite sirah. There were also various Cabernets, Merlots and every other well known California red (except of course pinot noir. It gets hot in Paso. There are even a couple of pinot specialist now, however). Whites were not really on the radar, and Rhone wines were rare.

Things have changed in the last 10 years. Rhone wines, both red and white, have spread quickly in parts of California. but they have taken over in Paso. Paso Robles is the leader in both quality and quantity of fine Rhones by a considerable margin. Not only have the Rhone reds taken to the area but Rhone whites (notably Viognier and Roussanne but also Grenache Blanc and Marsanne here and there) have also proven to be great fits for the area. While there are still many (possibly even an ongoing majority) of wineries happy to pour you a delicious zin or petite, my feeling is the Rhones have taken over for good as the signature theme here (of course you can have it both ways, and many wineries feature the old classics along with a nice and ever-growing Rhone selection). As a footnote to all of this I've found recently that the Cabernets are really nice now as well.

Having witnessed (and tasted) this metamorphosis firsthand, I am more impressed by those tasty Rhones every time I go into Paso. And make no mistake, most are not lacking in the alcohol department but they bring elegance and control to the boisterous Paso fruit in a way that many of the local zins and petites do not. A mild shocker to me is the success of Viognier, now the signature white grape in a region never previously known for decent whites of any kind. Viognier likes considerably warmer climes than Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc (forget about something like Riesling, which does best in outright chilly conditions), and it seems to like Paso's. In fact many of the better Viogniers come from Eastside Paso, not the cooler Westside.

The Westside-Eastside demark in the Paso Robles appellation is the 101 freeway. The "Westside" extends to within about 5 miles of the Pacific Ocean while the Eastside stretches several miles beyond the Paso Robles city limits out wards to the Southeast (the wineries and vineyards directly East of town are some of the oldest in the area and only extend a few miles before giving way to predominantly nut trees and lots of open space). This Southeastern region seems to be where the growth is occurring on the Eastside.

The Westside wineries have long campaigned for their own appellation (this was recently turned down by the TTB) and like to boast about their Westside credentials at every turn.

"It's cooler on the Westside"

"The Westside gets breeze and morning marine layers from the Pacific Ocean"

"The Westside has rolling terrain at higher elevations and superior soil."

"Don't be a chump. The Westside is way better"

(not a direct quote on that last one)

This is in contrast to the Eastside vineyards, which may boast about many attributes, but rarely tout their Eastsideness.

There is growing sentiment however that the "Westside" is a perhaps arbitrary and/or political boundary, amidst growing evidence that soil types and microclimates are distributed more randomly within different areas in various  reaches of the appellation.

My personal experience is that when the Paso Rhone eruption was in its nascency the Westside indeed had a large edge on the Eastsiders I have found recently that you can certainly get some top-flight wines from Eastside vineyards. I was hoping that was an ongoing trend; the vineyards I was going to look at were on the Eastside.

One of the original engines behind the Rhone explosion in Paso Robles was Tablas Creek Winery. Tablas Creek is a collaboration between the Perrin family and Robert Haas,the owner and importer, respectively, of Chateau de Beaucastel. Chateau de Beaucastel is a top estate in Chateauneuf du Pape, itself the top appellation in the Southern Rhone. The story of Tablas Creek is told better and in more detail in many other spots but, briefly, the Perrin and Haas families decided to do a joint venture in California that would feature Rhone varietals, based on the actual cuttings from the Beaucastel estate in France. This was quite a commitment, as introducing a new clone into California requires a quarantine period of several years. The business plan also involved purchasing a large tract of vineyard acreage, as well as building a winery facility, tasting room, reception areas, organic farm, etc. An ambitious undertaking.

After searching up and down the state a site deep in the Westside of the Paso Robles appellation was selected, apparently based on its similarity to Chateauneuf du Pape in both soil (rocky limestone) and climate: "the remarkably Rhône-like Paso Robles climate" as the Tablas Creek website puts it. Tablas Creek has been a great success and is one of the most prestigious and well known wine operations in Paso at the moment. They also make excellent wines, and they do so consistently every year. I've enjoyed many Tablas Creek wines and can honestly say that none of them has been worse than above average, with many being in the top rank of my wine tasting experiences (ironically they even make a decent chardonnay). The impressive results of the Tablas venture created an implicit stamp of approval for any venture in Paso from then on that had Rhone grapes on their mind. At this writing the Tablas Creek estate has seven of the thirteen allowable Chateauneuf du Pape grape varieties under cultivation and guess what? The other six will shortly be released from quarantine, meaning the Tablas estate will soon feature every grape variety found in Chateauneuf du Pape.

As a side note, the Tablas clones that originated from the Beaucastel Estate are available commercially and are planted at many sites throughout the state. In Charlie's vineyard in Amador County (my Grenache and Mourvedre source for 2008) all the Rhone varietals are 100% Tablas clones.

Before my trip I once again perused the grape available ads in Wine Business Monthly again. There was not much of interest with the exception of a tempranillo listing, right there in Paso Robles. $1800 a ton, more or less par for the area.

Tempranillo is a grape associated with Spain, where it's prominent in many of that country's most prestigious wines. Although most red varieties found in France are also found in Spain, Tempranillo is unique to the Iberian peninsula in European viticulture (it is usually known in Portugal as Tinta Roriz and used mostly for port). It's commonly claimed both in and out of Spain that widespread cultivation of Grenache originated in Spain and later spread to France (this status is also claimed for Mourvedre). While this debate will likely go on indefinitely (and Spain indeed has a large amount of Grenache (Garnacha in Spanish), often found in world class wines), there is no doubt that Tempranillo is the flag bearer as Spain's unique noble grape (A recent trend in Spain sees many Garnacha vineyards being grafted over to Tempranillo).

I've had a few Spanish tempranillo-based wines, and for the most part they are very nice (especially the more expensive ones, for some reason), a rich, tannic and earthy drink, best with similarly rich and earthy Spanish foods (hams, paella, etc). The most famous Spanish wine, Vega Sicilia Unico is a blend of tempranillo and various other grapes, usually Bordeaux, varieties (some potential combination of cabernet, merlot and/or malbec and occasionally some other Spanish grapes - tempranillo is always tin the majority). I've also had a few California Tempranillos, and two of them have really stood out - a blend from Core that included Grenache and syrah (a combination that can be found in Spain) and a wine called El Loco from Four Vines in Paso that I think might have had Syrah in it but was mostly Tempranillo. I've also had a handful of California Tempranillos that were pedestrian. Truth to be told, I haven't had enough of it to form an opinion on the California version but I know that good Tempranillo is a very fine thing.

Was California Tempranillo in my future? Shouldn't I focus on finding the Rhone grapes and a cash flow white? A definite yes on the latter and a definite who knows? on the former. My thinking on the Tempranillo is I need a way to break through. Tempranillo is certainly spreading and is considered pretty exotic right now (much the same way Sangiovese was when first promulgated in California 10 to 15 years ago). Producing a Tempranillo might attract attention. Producing a poor Tempranillo would be a disaster of course.

The other reason I answered the ad is I was going up there any way and was curious to take a look and see if I felt the karma, as a certain quasi-psychic connection had inspired me take a flyer on Solano County a year ago.

I called the number on the ad and spoke to a woman named Ciel. It turns out the vineyard was 3 or 4 years old and this would be the first vintage where they would keep the grapes (the small amount of fruit in previous years had been dropped ). She was looking for someone to commit to the whole output of the 3 acre planting - she estimated it would 3 or 4 tons this year, growing to about 11 to 12 tons in subsequent years. She stressed to me that the price they were asking was miniscule compared to their investment in the venture. This was true without a doubt but it didn't mean the grapes would be worth the money. In fact I'm confident the vines are too young to produce wine of much merit for the next year or two. Whoever would commit to the whole vineyard would have to have a strong sense of future glory from a totally unproven parcel.

There are usually two forces at work when I'm in a discussion about some sort of flyer like grabbing some obscure Tempranillo grapes. One side of me is an ongoing fantasy of an established guy with a proprietary winery where I could conduct mad-scientist experiments on whatever interesting grapes I came across, without much regard to commercial potential and upfront costs.  The other side (the head instead of the heart? The angel? The devil? The accountant?) assured me I have neither the money or physical resources to play around with a ton of tempranillo (I was assuming my superior powers of persuasion would get me a ton instead of the whole lot). I was going up on Tuesday and since my vineyard appointments were on Wednesday I arranged to check out the tempranillo on Tuesday afternoon.

The drive was uneventful and I rolled out to northwest Paso Robles to look at young Tempranillo vines. My sporadic role as wine maven means I look at vineyards. I'm not sure what to look for, especially in early May. Naturally, if the vines are yellow or red, or dead, that's a no go. Similarly, if there are huge mounds of trash interspersed with the vines, or infestations of insects, that's probably not good either. These situations haven't come up - what I always see are rows of verdant grapevines. Frequently the proud grower will point out the trellising methodology to me, or they'll remark upon the density and spacing. This is very important but generally it goes past me. Bad winery owner!  I learn the most, if I learn anything, by tasting a sample. The only time I really noticed anything was last year, when I went up to Amador County to look at the vineyard (long after I made the deal for the grapes). The mourvedre was going crazy, with shoots all over the place; in some spots they were meeting in the middle of the row!. The grower chuckled and remarked upon what a vigorous guy that rascal mourvedre is. Even to my inexperienced eye it looked like it was badly in need of some cropping. I've realized since I was absolutely right, Charlie was letting the rascal mourvedre go crazy to make up for his disastrously small Grenache harvest.

It was a nice enough visit looking at the young tempranillo vineyard, chatting with Ciel and playing with the squadron of border collies who roamed her vineyard. She remained adamant about having someone commit to her full production. It strikes me as naive, as she's asking full pop for young and untested grapes. I can't really imagine anyone taking a flier on it. There is other Tempranillo available in the area, at similar prices. I assuredly did not feel a karmic connection to the vineyard, so I was off to some general wine tasting with some local friends before my vineyard appointments the next day.

As I was eating lunch that day I received a call from Matt Turrentine, of the Turrentine wine brokerage. Turrentine was actually taking me seriously enough to call me and ask me what I wanted; I reiterated the Grenache-Mourvedre idea. Matt was cordial, asking me what my expected selling prices were and assuring me they dealt with several properties in the area (which I knew from the website listings). He said he might be back around Paso Robles Thursday (I was scheduled to leave early that day) and could possibly show me a couple of vineyards. Why not, I was up there already and might as well get the full lay of the land. He promised to call me to let me know. I was elated at having furrowed myself into a position where I could be a discriminating buyer.

I've just returned from Paso Robles Grape Search 2009 has started n earnest. The syrah came out well so I re-upped for another six tons. I had a suspicion the Amador County connection would be a one-shot when I bought the grapes and nothing has occurred since then to change my mind - the Grenache came out nicely but there's only one barrel and I suspect it was lightning in a bottle (so to speak) - my gut feeling is most years it's a high alcohol kind of item (not really a good attribute for a relatively light red like Grenache). Also, Charlie offered me Mourvedre but no Grenache a month or so ago. When I inquired after the Grenache he replied "there might be some later", sounds like a no to me.

My impression of the high alcohol tendencies of Amador come from personal experience drinking gigantic zins from the area. I used to really like those wines; at one point it was a almost a competition between myself and a couple of like-minded zinfandel-loving friends as to who could track down the highest alcohol zinfandel monster, Mmmm, feel that ocean of fruit and alcohol drown out, um, most everything else.

I outgrew the nuclear powered zin fixation fairly early in my wino career, although a nice zinfandel will always be welcome at my table .Charlie in Amador has zin and offered me some of that. Last year I had a wine called "Problem Child" from Linne Calodo, a small winery in Paso I'd heard about it from my (Paso adjacent) Templeton friends, who are up on the hot wineries there long before anyone else I know

I stopped by with some friends and we sampled some wines. "Problem Child" had just received a fabulous score from one of the 2 heavy wine critics (i.e. Robert Parker/Wine Spectator). It had sold out immediately but the winemaker apparently had just found a cache he didn't know he had, so we were informed it was available for sale - no tasting though.

All of the Linne Calodo wines were very solid but high priced. I was really curious about this "Problem Child" wine for some reason despite my frequent ranting against the wine score mindset. What the hell, I plunked down the $55,

"Problem Child" is a mix of zin (mostly), and about 15% each of syrah and mourvedre. A month later I brought it over to some friends and it was so good we drank it while waiting for dinner - all gone by the time dinner was ready. Terrific wine, extremely tasty The zin-mourvedre-syrah combo really resonated. Since this is not a common blend I'm intrigued by the possibilities, especially since Linne Calodo's pricing leaves plenty of room at the lower end.

Charlie sent me down some zin made by Mt Aukum, who take his Grenache (when I first considered buying the Grenache the Mt Aukum is the one I tried). Apparently Mt Aukum had never released it, since it came in an unlabeled bottle

With a little home printed tag on it describing the contents.

I was curious to see what he had as a way of perhaps trying my hand at some impromptu zin-mourvedre blending. What he had was one of the highest alcohol unfortified wines I've ever had; after half a glass I felt like I'd been doing vodka shots. My blending plans involving zinfandel are on hold for now.

Paso Robles is the primary spot for Rhone varieties in California. Only Santa Barbara County really gives it any competition in that area in California but the Santa Barbara style is a very different one from Paso Robles - Paso wines will be more in the spirit of the Southern Rhone, with exuberant fruit and a certain devil-may-care attitude (I'm really taking the wine anthropomorphism to its limit here) while the Santa Barbara style can be said to display a certain elegance, even formality in some cases. I find both styles appealing but the style I was looking for was perhaps related more to the Paso fruit. Additionally I was pretty sure anything I could get my hands might come in lower on price than Santa Barbara County. The fact that no one in Santa Barbara County ever returned my grape inquiry emails also contributed to my looking northwards.

I decided it was time to chase down some Paso Grenache and Mourvedre. Grenache and Mourvedre are relatively  rare in Santa Barbara County and planted widely in Paso. Mourvedre is an inconsistent grape in the cooler Santa Barbara climes - it likes a nice flash of heat at some point and is a very late ripener. The Santa Barbara Grenache can be quite nice but there just doesn't seem to be that much around. Well, like I said, I don't know for sure, but certainly no one was offering me any.

This year I decided to try to track down grapes early; I didn't want a repeat of last year where I ended up getting unknown grapes from faraway places at the last minute. Unfortunately no one knew who I am; I sent out some emails asking for grapes. I thought I asked nicely, but no one even wrote me back. I know some one must want to sell grapes at some point, even to an unknown like Ritual Wine Company; there was something wrong in my approach.

After my initial blind overtures to various growers did not elicit a response I looked into engaging a grape broker. I didn't know any grape brokers but I figured I could find them. My problem with it was they would take a cut that would inflate the price but, hey, I need grapes.

After perusing some web sites and links I stumbled onto some grape and bulk wine brokers. The most important of these, it seemed, was Turrentine. Their website listed all sorts of nifty grape opportunities. How about some merlot from the Alexander Valley? 50 tons available! Perhaps you're more in the mood for whites? 22 tons of chardonnay waiting in Napa, 50 tons of Pinot Grigio in Contra Costa looking for a home or maybe get slightly exotic with some Rousanne from Paso Robles? It's all there, literally hundreds of listings, no prices or principals listed of course. Naturally a prospective buyer or seller has to be vetted by Turrentine and, more importantly, Turrentine arranges the transaction and takes their cut.

There's plenty of Grenache and Mourvedre from Paso Robles on the web site.I decided to register, and in addition made inquiries as an unregistered "guest" at the same time. I specified some Grenache and Mourvedre lots, aiming for the ones that had the smallest tonnage available. I never heard back on the lots, nor did I receive a response to my application to become a registered user of the fulsome Turrentine web site. This was mildly disappointing but not surprising.

I'd found another grape broker web site, a company called Allied Grape Growers. I sent them an email:

Hello

We are looking for the following 2009 vintage CA grapes:

Mourvedre (Paso Robles)

Grenache (any region)

Chardonnay (Central Coast)

Sangiovese (any region, piccolo clone preferred)

How's that for some lingo? I'm specifying Sangiovese clones, oh boy. It sounded good at the time, I think.

I did get a response:

Mike:

Thanks for contacting us.  What quantities are you talking?  We don't handle small quantities, so I may not be able to assist you.

Thanks.

Jeff

A response! Of course I was barking up the wrong tree but at least the tree had acknowledged me.

So I replied:

We only do small qtys so it may not be a fit, we're looking for 4 toms of chard and 2 tons of each of the rest - can you point me to a broker who does small lots?

And Jeff replied:

Try gary agajanian

So I did.

After some back and forth phone calls I got referred to a man named John who worked with Agajanian. I outlined my needs, reiterating the Grenache-Mourvedre-Chardonnay trilogy (maybe not worry about Sangiovese right away). Yes, they might be able to help me out, he knew some people in Paso, and he might hook me up with some Monterey vineyards.

I was hopeful; at last there was some sort of opening.

In the meantime I had periodically checked the Wine Business Monthly ads for grapes. These were woefully short on grapes I wanted; they seemed to be filled with people selling bulk wine, or grapes from Lodi, or huge lots of cabernet or expensive pinot noir. Not much happening there for Ritual Wine Company.

A week or so later I decided to look more closely at the print edition of Wine Business Monthly, scouring the ads for more grape brokers. I did not find any. I did however find an article about an enterprise in San Francisco called Crushpad, a custom crush facility that handled all phases of the process for (presumable well-heeled) clients who wanted their own wine label. Crushpad would handle the legal maneuvers source the grapes, make the wine and bottle it. The client presumable would decide what kind of grapes (from Crushpad's lengthy list of grape suppliers) and, I guess, design the label and try to sell the stuff, although this last part is of course strictly optional as far as Crushpad is concerned.

I went to Crushpad's web site and their list of grape suppliers was indeed impressive - there's even a good selection of French wine grapes in addition to the long list of California growers. I called and asked if they handled grape brokering for non-clients (i.e. me). No they did not but the winemaker there advised me to call Larry Kavanaugh. Larry works for (one guess): Turrentine.

I called Larry and explained that I was in search of grapes - he agreed to call me back the next day (Saturday), when he could talk.

Larry in fact called me the next Monday morning - I explained the situation and we talked a bit. He told me Matt Turrentine (the 3^rd generation of Turrentines in the grape and wine brokering business) would contact me and talk with me further about my grape needs - subsequently we could go visit some vineyards.

Shortly after Larry's call I received a call from a man named John who worked at Agajanian. He'd found a couple of sites in Paso, a chardonnay site in Monterey County and a higher end site in Santa Barbara County, in the Santa Rita Hills.

The Santa Rita Hills have rapidly become one of the top, probably the top pinot noir appellation in the Central Coast. The Santa Rita Hills themselves are a narrow range stretching from the outskirts of Buellton to about 5 miles outside of Lompoc. It's a cool climate area with both rolling and very steep terrain hat also has some higher elevation vineyards. The pinot noir from there in a good year is quite sublime and I recommend it highly. It's also expensive, a typical bottle running between $40 and $75. The chardonnay has not received the same accolades but the general assumption in California is that a good pinot noir area produces a good chardonnay. One of the top labels in Santa Rita, Sea Smoke, gets upwards of $50 for their chardonnay; other Santa Rita chardonnays are all over the map, price-wise, but it is without a doubt a high prestige appellation.

The price for the chardonnay was $3500 a ton, higher than the $2500 per ton maximum point I'd specified. John mentioned that the grower was also a winery and that he might let me make the chardonnay at the winery, thereby saving me crush and short term storage fees. It still came out to $3000 a ton but I was thinking it about it - putting an appellation like Santa Rita Hills on my label might go a long way towards legitimizing my enterprise. Think halo effect, as a car maker might do in producing a sexy sports car for the purpose of getting people into a showroom.

John and I set up a time to meet in Paso Robles about 2 weeks hence: we would hit a couple of the Paso vineyards and then travel north 1½ hours to Monterey County. It would be a long day; we would meet at 9:00 AM. He would let me know about the Santa Rita chardonnay as well when we met.

After navigating through the ABC application process it was time to finally design my label. Every label on an alcoholic beverage must be approved by the TTB, a process which used to take around 90 days but has recently come online. I had some firm ideas about the layout (simple) and color scheme (red, black and light gray).

I sat down at my outdated picture editing program and began fiddling around with the nascent Ritual Wine label and logo. I knew the word Ritual would be inside a rectangle (just like about 5,000 other logos. Hey, it works). My first draft was the 'logo' in red on black, with the description of the wine in light gray on a black background. Legible but very boring. I needed something spicy. Maybe... a gargoyle?

I'm not sure why a gargoyle popped into my head. Gargoyles are somewhat ritualistic I guess. I've always liked them, as they're threatening, but they're on our (i.e. humans) side, as their function back in the Middle Ages was to scare away evil spirits. Since gargoyles generally have pretty scary facial features, I wanted an image showing a gargoyle silhouette, wings arched, ready to take off. No face.

My vast internet canvas (comprising a cursory look at Google image search results) proved fairly fruitless. My girlfriend Adina, a librarian, looked further for me (it's what she likes to do) and, well, there just don't seem to be that many silhouettes of gargoyles. There are a lot of shots of stern gargoyles, cartoon gargoyles, monster gargoyles and of course gargoyles on the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

I let the label ideas rest for few days. One of the upsides of starting out in the wine business is the incredible length of time between buying the initial lots of grapes and the many months that transpire until you can sell some wine. This has provided a nice cushion in allowing me to proceeding at a leisurely pace in terms of getting legal with The Man (Mans? Men?), and similarly I had plenty of time to think about labels, logos, fonts, images, etc.

A few days later Adina had another idea. She is friendly with an ex-boyfriend, Geoff, who is a graphic artist by trade; she'd mentioned my label design travails and Geoff had remarked that he would be happy to help me out, taking payment only in wine. Fantastic! Not only could I barter some inventory, but the inventory wouldn't even exist for at least another year.

I had finally located a gargoyle image I liked. It turned out to be a photo of the "Stone Master Gargoyle", an actual for-sale animatronic gargoyle that "moves his head, unfurls his wings, and coughs smoke from his mouth." Only $8700. It seemed like a great little toy to keep around for certain occasions if one was extremely wealthy and/or profligate but in any case it was a nice looking image, plus it was in the perfect color - shades of gray on a black background, so I could slip it onto my label with minimal photo editing. Although, like all gargoyles, this guy had an extremely menacing expression, I reduced the image to where the dominant feature were enormous wings stretching upward from our hero's back. So it was a sort of mini-gargoyle, almost like a logo. As a logo I think t it's pretty trick - I'm partial to a gargoyle with a nice pair of wings.

I now had a working image design, featuring "Ritual" in red on black surrounded by a red rectangle, with my little gray gargoyle buddy underneath followed by some descriptive text .in (lighter) gray. I forwarded it to Geoff, who discarded everything and sent me his vision of the Ritual Wine Company label.

I had mentioned my gargoyle fixation to Geoff and of course my mockup had the miniature animatronic gargoyle proudly spreading its wings so he ran with the idea. He'd spiffed up the Ritual logo, using a semi-gothic font and vastly improving the graphics. The improved logo and graphics were imposed on a large grimacing gargoyle face which spanned most of the label. It was very effective as perhaps a horror movie poster or religious iconography (scary division). As a wine label i.e. something you'd want on the table while you were eating and enjoying that fine Ritual wine, much less so. I had to respect the purity of his vision but of course it wasn't going to work.

I decided to shift gears away from gargoyles. I briefly toyed with a griffin, another mythical creature perhaps more sympathetic looking than a gargoyle (still with good wings, but with the body of a lion), but after some cursory research it seemed griffins were already in wide use, especially among various German duchies and assorted brand names.

My next thought was an insect. Not a repulsive creepy insect but an insect with a positive image, maybe a butterfly or bee. I dismissed this quickly, as it struck me as both clichéd and slightly cutesy. After exchanging a few emails on the subject Geoff and I decided to try Stonehenge. It's ritualistic, it's recognizable and, excepting an unfortunate Spinal Tap connection, pretty respectable and "classy".

After some back and forth we came up with an attractive design, basically a nice sunset at Stonehenge in shades of red fading to black, text in bright white. Although this label has a somewhat gothic lean to it it's very distinctive. I sent it around to various wino friends for feedback. Most liked it, with the exception of my Central Coast friend Robert, who was a bit put off by the vampire color scheme; at one point in his email he opined "maybe" another color would make it appeal to people who "drink wine in the daytime."

My attorney friend Dave reminded me to make sure we had the right to use the Stonehenge photo and sure enough, when I asked Geoff about it he pointed me to Flickr, a photo-sharing website. It was one of several submissions by "Rob from Canada" who apparently spent most of his time traveling the world, and photographing it. Rob had insisted that his photos not be used without his permission, so I decided to email him and ask for permission. I threw in an offer of a case of wine and a credit on the website to sweeten the deal.

I didn't hear back from RobfromCanada so I resent the email. Geoff also sent him an email asking for permission to use the image. There was no response from Rob so I decided to move on. Geoff has an account at an image bank; it's generally $18 to purchase non-exclusive rights to an image. I was a little surprised he hadn't gone there in the first place instead of just lifting something from Flickr.

The image bank had hundreds of Stonehenge photos to choose from. I did a search on "Ritual" just for the hell of it; it didn't come up with much but it did return a striking image of medieval statue of a virgin swathed in robes stabbing herself in her bare shoulder. I was briefly tempted to forget the Stonehenge thing and go with the virgin but I'm playing it a little safe first time around. Nevertheless if all goes well I'll be rotating new images in annually (just like Mouton-Rothschild!), and the suicidal virgin has been filed away for future use.

After we'd settled on a new Stonehenge image we finally heard from RobfromCanada, who was excited at the myriad possibilities for his image.

After complimenting us on our concept he dug further:

This is an intriguing opportunity and I am open to discuss some non-exclusive rights to this photo and would like to know where it will be used in conjunction with the label on the bottle, ie - wine cases, letterheads, website, posters, etc.  What is the expected quantity output, and also the duration of use you are interested in?

This sounded complicated. I didn't want to engage in a protracted Q & A with Rob, I didn't want to negotiate terms of use with him and I didn't even want to ship him a case of wine after getting the other image for $18. Although his photo was slightly better than the one we selected it wasn't better enough. Thus, no to Rob, yes on the purchased image. The front label design was complete.

When you sell wine in the United States there are strict guidelines that must be followed. Some are sensible and worthwhile, such as specifying appellation, varietals and vintage. Some are sort of dumb, such as the requirement to put "contains sulfites" on any bottle where SO² has been added (almost all of them). Some are very dumb, such as the "Government Warning", which must go on every bottle. The "Government Warning" has warnings against operating machinery, driving and drinking while pregnant. The proper display of this warning is taken very seriously by the Feds, with detailed requirements as to font size (based on bottle size), capitalization, bolding, etc

Also in the offing, which I would rate as stupid beyond belief, are requirements to post caloric and nutritional content on the bottles. So far this last requirement has not been implemented but it is being seriously discussed.

The back label was much easier than the front - we threw in all the required stuff, added the website address (ritualwine.com) and put the logo on top, with the vintage and varietal below. The label, she is done and submitted. I hope they like it, legally speaking.

The "Stone Master" gargoyle. Looks a little like a flying bunny rabbit here

The gargoyle idea translated to a foreboding label

 A quickly discarded cathedral idea. Ritual is a big-tent winery

And here we go. Note proper vintage date finally.

When I had me meeting at Fess Parker Kathy had emphasized to me that I had a lot of work to do in terms of compliance with various federal and state agencies. I had not devoted much time or energy to these issues because,hey, it's all about the wine isn't it. That's what's appealing, the romance, the wine, the mysterious chemistry, the artistry of presenting my mysterious new product to a world waiting for Ritual Wine to explode onto the scene.

OK, maybe.

Kathy waved a copy of a State Board of Equalization permit at me and stressed that I could not talk with them about moving my barrels in unless I had one of those. I knew I needed my ABC license, as well as my TTB permit. I had formed the LLC. I'd even gotten my IRS Employer Identification Number (this was the single easiest transaction with a government agency in the whole process by far. Enter my LLC file number and wham! The number is generated online and they email a letter legitimizing my enterprise slightly more).

Thus with my wine sleeping in barrel for the winter it was time to get serious about finalizing all the licenses, permits and paperwork that went into being allowed to sell wine in California.

The ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission) and TTB (Tobacco and Trade Bureau) are the main agencies in charge of blessing alcohol sales and production in California.

In late December I'd been summarily rejected by the ABC, showing up to the LA office with my package of forms, incomplete and incorrect. Suitably chastened, I'd gotten the Planning Department signoff and had redoubled my efforts towards getting my forms filled out correctly. The most absurd part (to date) had been diagramming the map of the premises i.e. world headquarters of Ritual Wine Company i.e. my house on a little hill in the middle of L.A. You are required to submit an ink diagram showing not only the floor plan and square footage but also the surrounding neighborhood (artistic ability not really a requirement). Ther was my diagram, showing the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, as well as the office from which I would run things. The neighborhood diagram showed a bunch of neighbors' houses. Thankfully no schools or churches were in the immediate vicinity, as that's a no-no when selling booze, even though of course no one would be rolling up my driveway for their daily six pack or bottle of Jim Beam.

I marched into the ABC armed with my updated and reinforced package of forms. The woman who took care of me seemed bemused at my entire venture and she found a number of omissions in the package. Thankfully these did not involve much more than filling in some additional information, usually a signature, address, business type, etc. This data gets repeated very often when dealing with The Man, especially in cases of becoming an alcohol purveyor.

After signing my name an additional few hundred times (seemingly), suddenly it was over. I had passed this phase and was now privileged enough to write the state a check for several hundred dollars.

The fun wasn't quite over. The ABC woman went in the back and returned with a familiar poster, the one that has PUBLIC NOTICE OF APPLICATION TO SELL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES screaming across the top, and the various minutiae of the applicant below: Applicant, type of license, address, etc. These signs are very common around town (and California I guess), and are spotted in soon to be opened liquor stores, restaurants, bars, etc. She began filling it out with a large marking pen. Sure enough, I was going to have to display one of these as well.

I found this pretty amusing. The house is at the top of a small hill, with a steep driveway connecting my aerie to the rest of the neighborhood. I could post it on my kitchen window and any guests who showed could get a big laugh out of it.

As it turns out, posting it out of view of the neighbors was not an option. The poster in fact had to be in plain view at street level, which meant that my little yard down below would have my Alcohol Sale plans in plain sight, visible to one and all in the 'hood. My short lived amusement about the banner evaporated immediately and I tried to explaining that this was a residential neighborhood, no one cared and that the local kids would probably steal the poster immediately and repeatedly - the idea of displaying this banner to the world around me at my private residence absolutely horrified me. The ABC woman assured me in strong terms there were no exceptions to the rule, that an ABC inspector could show up "at any time" to ensure I was in compliance (who knew what sanctions would come down I wasn't) , and that the poster had to be displayed for thirty days, period. It had to be in plain sight for the additional reason that any one who wanted to could file a protest against the impending alcoholization of the environs. "But that usually doesn't happen", she added helpfully. I would also be visited by an ABC representative towards the end of my 30 day period to ensure that my facility matched the diagrams I had submitted; naturally said representative would also confirm that my poster was visible as well.

That was that. I went home and began constructing a display case for my poster. I found a plastic case that I'd used a long time ago to display some of my paintings at an a coffee house. I duct taped the case shut and glued it to a wooden post. I went down to  the front of my property and hammered the sign into the ground. The ground was wet from recent rains so that was not a problem.

It rained again in a couple of days and the whole poster display apparatus disintegrated. This was getting silly. It was bad enough having this sign right there on the street, now I had to maintain it every other day. I rebuilt my poster display and once gain left it there down by the street.

The Notorious ABC Poster, now safely removed from my front yard

As it happened no one stole the sign and I received no remarks about it from any neighbors, something I found slightly odd. I don't know if any ABC investigators had cruised to ensure compliance but I doubt it.

Towards the end of my 30 day period I received a call from the ABC investigator who would inspect the facility. She would be showing in a couple of days for the final inspection. When she did show up her car promptly got stuff on my steep and treacherous driveway, so I strolled down to where she was stranded, right next to my ABC poster still arrayed proudly for all to see. She let me take the wheel and I extricated her car fairly easily. I was initially afraid that this experience might weight negatively towards my application but she was grateful I freed her car and somewhat embarrassed she'd gotten stuck in the first place.

After coming upstairs and making sure everything was where I said it was on my form ("There's the kitchen. There's the office", etc. You get the idea) she signed off on my premises. This also meant I could finally take down that absurd banner as well. And yet another bureaucratic roadblock had been hurdled.

A new year has dawned and I've spent the holiday season getting legit. The meeting with Fess Parker, where the staff patiently outlined to me the various agencies I had to satisfy, had a lasting, and beneficial, effect. In the month of December I have met with the Alcoholic Beverage Commission (ABC). I have met with State Board of Equalization. I have met with Los Angeles Planning Commission. I have sent money to the Franchise Tax Board. I have sent a letter to Fess Parker that will be passed on the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). I have opened a business checking account at Wells Fargo. I have refinanced my house (again) to build my war chest for the capital-intensive year to come, whence I not only pay for another harvest and crush season but also for my first bottling run.

The ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission) and TTB (Tobacco and Trade Bureau) are the main agencies in charge of blessing alcohol sales and production in California.  I knew the ABC process would be long and tortuous; it was time to get started.

I had my first meeting with the ABC early in the month. The ABC requires an applicant to walk in with their "package". The package consists of a variety of forms, permits, affidavits, floor plans, etc depending on what kind of license is being applied. There are far more license related to alcohol than I would have imagined, although in hindsight I can't see why I was surprised. There are myriad options for making, selling and distributing beer, wine, hard liquor, etc. You can do it retail. You can do it wholesale. You can do both. You can do it on a temporary basis (e.g. a catered event). You can do it mail order only, or in a store, or at an event. You get the idea.

It was confusing to precisely discern which permit I was going to apply for. Originally the thinking by me and the Fess Parker people was that I would apply to the San Luis Obispo branch, which was the closest to Parker Station, the official name of my imminent storage and bottling facility. The staff at the SLO ABC is friendly and used to dealing with wine industry people (especially neophytes with naive questions). After a few phone calls I had figured out which forms comprised my package, and which licenses I would need. I needed a 17 and a 20. The 17 is for a beer and wine wholesaler, which I will be since I don't own or control my production facility. I'll also be a 20, wine retailing, although with the qualifier of "internet sales only". This struck me as perhaps being a separate license but no, apparently I just assure them it's "internet only" and I don't have to meet the facilities requirements for a normal "20".

My package in early December comprised a number of official ABC forms:

140 CERTIFICATION RE CHAPTER 15TIED-HOUSE RESTRICTIONS

208A INDIVIDUAL PERSONAL AFFIDAVIT

208B INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL AFFIDAVIT

217 APPLICATION QUESTIONNAIRE

253 SUPPLEMENTAL DIAGRAM

255 ZONING AFFIDAVIT

256 LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY QUESTIONNAIRE

257 NR LICENSED PREMISES DIAGRAM (NON-RETAIL)

Some of these are very easy to deal with. The 140 form only required me to assure the powers that be that I did not own wine production, distribution and retail facilities at the same time. Ah, another arcane liquor law (there were many more to come). Frankly this has me completely confused, as any winery operation with a tasting room is involved with production, distribution and retail operations but I'm sure there are many detailed rules and loopholes.

Some of the other documents made little sense. The two diagram forms (253 and 257NR) required diagrams of the premises and surrounding areas. Obviously these were directed towards liquor stores and/or warehouse/production facilities, not my little home office. When I called the ABC for assistance they assured me that it in fact meant my office. OK, no problem, I found a zoning map of my neighborhood and stick it in my folder (er, package).

There were many other questions on the forms, most requiring reiteration of basic information (addresses, personal data, etc), several times. The Man (state division) wanted to know where I got the money for my little venture and if, officially, I was a stand-up guy.

The most puzzling was the zoning affidavit, requiring a signoff from the City Planning Department that my facility (what facility?) was copasetic.

The ABC requires an appointment - you have to show up in person with the package and sign everything in front of the BC person, as well as clarify any ambiguous or missing information. As is my occasional wont I'd waited until two days before the appointment to get started on filling out the forms. Naturally it took much longer I'd anticipated. The Zoning affidavit threw me for a complete loop but I reasoned that once I explained the situation the ABC person would agree that form 255 was not required.

There are several ABC offices in the state of California. I had spoken mostly with the San Luis Obispo office, since they were local to the Fess Parker facility (you must deal with your local ABC office). In fact until I called for an appointment and the San Luis Obispo office checked my zip code and informed me I belonged to the Van Nuys office. After calling the Van Nuys office they directed me to the Montrose (a suburb northeast of Pasadena) office, who redirected me to the LA Metro.

This was frustrating. All I was doing was trying to get an appointment and these guys couldn't even figure out what office I was supposed to get to. LA Metro in fact thought I belonged to the Inglewood office but my attempts to contact Inglewood revealed the fact that Inglewood had been merged into LA Metro. Back to LA Metro, who grudgingly accepted my appointment, set for the middle of holiday season about a week before Christmas.

The morning dawned cold and bright and off I went. I strolled into LA Metro, of course clutching my package. The administrator took a quick look and immediately terminated the process. No zoning affidavit. No diagram of the inside of the premises. And my nifty little printout of my neighborhood was unacceptable - it in fact had to be an ink drawing of the neighborhood.  I was missing a couple of documents as well.

The San Luis Obispo office is used to processing winery applications and its personnel are well-versed in winery issues. As you might guess, the LA Metro office processes very few winery applications (apparently almost none) - LA Metro is oriented to entities like liquor stores and restaurants. I could quickly see that I would have to strictly follow the rules and that a trip to the Planning Department was in my future, where I would hopefully persuade them to approve my little wine enterprise in the heart of a residential area. I had to make another appointment; the earliest one I could get was mid-January.

I decided to dedicate the day after Christmas, December 26, as my Planning Department day. I also hoped to get to the State Board of Equalization office to get my Seller's permit, a necessity for anyone selling most anything retail in the state of California. This would prove a wise and prescient decision.

The Los Angeles Department of City Planning is located in a large office plaza on the edge of downtown. They take up the entire fourth floor of one of the buildings. I had been warned in advance that dealing with them was an all day affair; the office is usually mobbed with applicants toting stacks of blueprints, forms and legal documents, as this agency has authority over what kinds of businesses and construction projects can be undertaken in various parts of the city. Including neophyte wine businesses of course.

When I arrived bright and early on the 26^th I found the whole floor largely deserted, with most of the employees lolling around chatting. Apparently I had picked a good day to show up. Probably the best day of the year. After getting oriented I went to the likeliest station and presented my affidavit to a bored but pleasant man killing time behind the counter. As he examined my form he frowned and began muttering that a wine business in an R1-1 area was completely against the rules, not allowable, etc. In other words, no go. My heart sank - after all this I was faced with getting some crappy little office somewhere to satisfy the bureaucracy.

After more frowning and more mumbling (both to himself and me) the man suddenly straightened up and said in a normal tone "I don't see how we can allow this. But actually I'm not the person to see. You have to go across the room to the zoning people".

A reprieve? Maybe. If this guy was so certain I was non-copasetic what would zoning say? Off I went. Even though things were largely dormant today the man I had to see was busy with other applicants. He was poring over blueprints with some businessmen types. I took a number and waited.

While I was waiting I was already adjusting my budget and timetable. I would have to rent an office, change all the applications to reflect the new (hopefully approved) business address, and basically spend money for essentially nothing except a legal requirement (welcome to the small business world!)

It was finally my turn. The person at the zoning desk seemed very relaxed. I showed him my affidavit and assured him that no inventory (i.e. wine) was going to be warehoused there, just my bad self (and my bad records and files). He seemed agreeable and signed his name, after scribbling "No inventory to be kept at this address"). It was that easy. I think on that day this particularly staffer might have approved most anything at my address: an airport, nuclear power plant, cement factory, etc. Just don't harsh his post-Christmas mellow. My gut feeling is that the venture is not strictly by the book but ... I was in! At least in this respect.

I practically floated out of the Planning Department and headed to Van Nuys. I knew the mojo was with me and sure enough, the State Board of Equalization was nearly empty. They approved my application on the spot (no charge!) and I strolled out of there in less than an hour with my newly minted resale permit. Certainly the most productive day after Christmas I've ever had.

I've returned from my trip up north having set out to accomplish two broad goals. The first was to meet with the Fess Parker people about moving my wine there and operating out of their facility. The second was to get some samples of my wine as well as tell Sal I was moving out in a month or two. Of course I wasn't going anywhere if the meeting at Fess Parker's didn't go well or didn't happen at all.

I had been to the Fess Parker custom crush facility twice previously: once when I was to meet Dave Potter (assistant winemaker and owner of his own wine venture) and taste some barrel samples and then subsequently to meet with Armando the facility manager to discuss my then theoretical custom crush requirements. I had signed up for wine futures of Dave Potter's new label, Municipal Winemakers and his debut red, entitled Bright Red. I had called him and he'd invited me to the facility to taste some barrel samples of other wines he was working on.

I never purchase wine futures by the way. Futures programs vary widely, from fat cat Bordeaux to small operators in California providing discounts on unreleased wines. Back in early Spring I had been perusing the Wine Cask futures catalogue, which my Solvang roommate Tony had received in the mail. The Wine Cask has been one of the preeminent wine stores in SB County for many years and is connected (physically, financially and titularly) to a nice restaurant in downtown Santa Barbara. Every year the Wine Cask hosts a two day tasting of SB County wine futures, mainly featuring the low production and high prestige stalwarts of the local wine scene. You can go the restaurant, taste rare barrel samples and have some tasty hors d'oeuvres. It runs about $60 and my understanding os a good time is had by all; I've never been.

The catalogue is fun to read and it's interesting to catch up on what the local luminaries will be releasing in the next few years. Occasionally the Wine Cask will provide a showcase for some new producers who they feel are worthy of exposure, despite their wine not necessarily being in what you might call the "rare and collectible" category. Bright Red was one of these and I think it was by far the least expensive red in the catalogue, going for $14 for the futures (it would be $21 upon release). I liked the description (an easy drinking Grenache-Cinsault-Syrah blend) and the idea of getting some futures somehow appealed top me at that moment. Especially low priced ones. So I signed up for ½ a case, the minimum futures order.

I emailed Dave shortly after I placed the order - he'd established a website and encouraged all interested parties to contact him. Although Dave skipped our meeting I did discover this gigantic facility and learned from the receptionist they indeed did custom crush. Although I had vaguely known in the back of my mind that Fess Parker had an additional facility besides the picturesque winery in the middle of the Santa Ynez Valley, I had no idea they did custom crush. Thus my wine consumerism has led me to an avenue that is directly related to my nascent production side.

Like any industry that promotes luxury goods, nice milieus are an essential part of the wine industry. A comfortable tasting room, soft music playing, eloquent descriptions of what you're drinking and why. Pretty knickknacks, all manner of  logo clothing, coffee table books. These are essential to promote the product although truthfully, even back in the day the flowery tasting rooms filled with potpourri were not really that appealing to me. In my new role I much prefer hanging out in the down and dirty of a humming production facility: wet cement floors, tanks and barrels lined up ready for action, talking trash about barrel samples. The Santa Maria custom crush facility fits the latter description while the Fess Parker Winery in Foxen Canyon open to the retail trade is a perfect example of the former.

The same day I had arranged for the meeting at the facility I'd picked up my Bright Red allocation at the Wine Cask in Santa Barbara. What made the whole thing even stranger was that I was toting ½ a case of Blair Fox syrah in my car as well, Blair Fox being the head winemaker at Fess Parker. I'd had the Blair Fox syrahs at the Vintners Festival in October and they were delicious. I'd ordered some from Blair and had just picked those up in a tasting room in Solvang. So it was all Fess Parker all the time last Thursday.

I sat down with Maurice, the chief operating officer and Kathy, who specialized in compliance and we started talking about my little venture and its requirements. I could see that my presence was a source of some puzzlement to the two of them; the Santa Barbara County wine community is small and tight knit and I'd materialized out of nowhere. To add to the confusion my grapes originated hundreds of miles to the North. Kathy outline to me that I was behind on my government paperwork. I know this, but it's just not as fun to fill out forms (and pay the attendant filing fees) as inspecting grapes and tasting wine.

During the meeting Maurice had to take a phone call. Kathy looked at me quizzically and asked if I was just getting into the wine business. The answer, as we know, is yes. She remarked that she'd been in the business for some time and couldn't understand why someone would want in. She apparently wanted out. What could I say? I shrugged and explained that, yes, it was a romantic thing and, yes, making wine is one of the silliest endeavors you could get into from an economic standpoint. I ticked off some other futile business ventures that regularly attracted entrepreneurs who might be classified as naïve: restaurants, airlines, racing cars. "It's a romantic thing", I said again, almost apologetically. She nodded silently - she's seen this movie before.

When you make or sell alcoholic beverages there is a lot of paperwork to do to satisfy government regulations. The Feds have one set of rules and the state has another. Two things I've always observed when dealing with the federal government compared to the state is that the feds seem to be more organized and they seem to charge less for filing forms, nothing in most cases. The federal authority over most things alcoholic is the TTB, which roughly stands for Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. They were formerly known as the BATF, which stood for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I can understand somewhat the connection between tobacco and alcohol but the firearms connection has always left me puzzled. In any case the TTB still handles firearms regulation and taxation, although they've removed it from their name. The California regulatory agency is the ABC - Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

The TTB requirements are not too daunting (especially compared to the ABC's). Since technically I'm just a wholesaler all that's requiredis  to file an Application for Basic Permit, get an employer number from the IRS, get label approval and file a DBA. The Fess Parker people do the latter two so I completed the first two this morning - it was painless (and free!) Of course if I were starting a real brick and mortar winery there would be bond and tax issue, EPA issues and various additional permits.

The state ABC requirements tend to be more involved. The one Kathy insisted on was the "Application for Seller's Permit". That's the one she wants complete before I move my booty on in. I spoke to the ABC people previously and they mentioned several other forms. After filling out the forms it's then required to show up in person for a quick interview, I guess to see if I had the requisite level of insanity and deep pockets to participate in the wine industry. The ABC people had mentioned that I needed to bring in forms 253, 255, 256-LLC, 140, 217, 208A and 208B. There's no doubt these are all very important and I guess I have to revisit them and find out what they actually mean.

Our talk went well, although at one point I started raving about barrel fermentation again, causing more confusion among the other two. Barrel fermentation? I could see going through their minds. I stressed I only wanted to do some experiments with it but clearly my obsession wasn't buying me credibility.

Soon after, Dave Potter was called into the meeting: the same Dave Potter who made the wine in my car, and who had inadvertently and unintentionally turned me on to the facility. Dave is the winemaker for the custom crush facility, which means he makes the wine for the custom crush clients. I'm not sure he makes the Fess Parker wines, since there are (at least) two other official Fess Parker winemakers. Dave seems easygoing although he's very serious minded about wine making as you would have to be overseeing such a large facility. We talked about bottling schedules and my expected load next vintage.

The bottling line at Fess Parker has a capacity of 90 bottles per minute, so accommodating my 500 or so cases wouldn't stress their system. Since a lot of clients use the facility for bottling services it is imperative I reserve now - they don't bottle during September or October (crush time) and the August slots are already filling up. This means I have to design my label, get it approved and buy glassware, capsules and corks. I suggested that I could perhaps piggyback onto the Fess Parker winery acquisition process and just use whatever they use, a suggestion that Maurice approved. That would be great, as there is no way I could get rates as low as Fess Parker Winery, not on my own soliciting quotes for a 500 case run. Whereas I would be on my own dealing with a dysfunctional business organization in Solano County, these guys were very competent and had been around the block several times.

One of the things that had struck me about the Fess Parker facility when Armando had given me a rate sheet (lo those many months ago when we were young) was how reasonable the rates were. Their standard custom crush rate is $450 a ton - by way of comparison I'm paying $650 per ton for my 6 ton lot and $950 per ton for my smaller lots. Similarly, my bottling run at Fess should be around $1750 whereas the quoted rate up North is $3000. The facility up North relies on the bottling truck, a portable bottling line in a tractor trailer that makes the rounds of wineries and does bottling runs. The bottling trucks are widely used in the California wine industry - bottling lines cost a fortune and if you have a good sized operation with several thousand cases, transporting all of those barrels to a bottling line somewhere else is not feasible. Since my operation is not what you would call good sized (funny how no one ever uses "bad-sized" to describe a small operation) moving my barrels a few hundred miles will run me less than my cost savings for bottling. The $3000 figure accounts for the minimum run required by the bottling truck people (a half day I believe, plus a surcharge based on case amount) plus the markup by the winery of course. Sal's promise of a lower rate was based on him pairing me with another client but I didn't have total faith in this plan coming to fruition - my worst case scenario had me holding the bag for the whole bottling truck session.

To add to the benefits Fess Parker is also much lower on case and barrel storage - $6 per moth versus $10 for barrels and $.15 per case versus $.25. To be fair though Fess Parker will nickel and dime me at every juncture for things that Sal throws in, such as barrel samples, topping, etc. So let's call it a toss up once bottling fees get removed from the equation. My real motivation is having my fledgling enterprise take advantage of an infrastructure where everyone knows exactly what you have to do to get that wine out to some thirsty consumers. Of course the people up North know, but they don't really care about me getting my wine out there - nor did I expect them to when I signed up.

The eventual upshot of the meeting is that the Fess Parker people would be glad to store my barrels and bottle my wine. As far as handling smaller lots of red wine, they just weren't interested. My goad is to grab hold of a few 1 to 2 ton lots of red grapes in Santa Barbara County next year - this won't work in a facility dominated by 6,000 gallon tanks. Interestingly Dave assured we could (here it comes) do barrel ferments on any small lots of whites I brought in. The building is enormous (it looks like an aircraft hangar from the outside) and floor space is not a problem!

My general plan includes doing 1 or 2 whites next year that I would release at the same time as the reds, so at least the white wine program will have a home.

I was off to points North; Sal was expecting me the next morning. I'd requested 2 half bottle barrel samples each of my three wines, and I wanted to tell him I was moving my wines out. I hoped he wouldn't take it personally but I couldn't see why it would matter to him in the slightest. In my various lives as musician, programmer and (now) wine negociant I know ego can easily get in the way of rational thought. Since the notorious email exchange I've had a distinct feeling of walking on eggshells when dealing with Sal and I know he must feel the same way.

I rolled into GV late morning on Friday, a typical gray, chilly December morning. There was a small group of workers playing around with some hoses at the winery entrance; Sal was upstairs. All else was quiet, with the exception of Sal's dog barking at what seemed to be an invisible presence.

I'd never been upstairs to the tasting room at this winery before; Sal was in the office behind the bar, apparently working on my storage contract. He came out and showed it to me, averring that it wasn't quite finished yet. I told him I was moving the wines south to the Fess parker facility. This made him happy, or perhaps relieved. I could tell that relations between us had just improved considerably. I was a pretty small customer and, what was worse, I wasn't his customer. This was really the crux of the problem - I was the winery's client but no one at the winery besides Sal knew I existed. Sal had his own clients to service that were a higher priority than myself.

We commenced chatting a bit about typical wine minutiae, followed by tasting my wines. They're all in barrel now. The Grenache seems to have entered a closed phase, the Mourvedre has developed some Rhone style funk on the nose and the syrah still tastes good - in fact somewhat better than good. I'm shocked by how good it might turn out, just based on these initial samples. The mourvedre continues to have potential, although I doubt it will develop into a world beater. The syrah has very nice color while the other two seem to be a little on the pink side of purple. The plan is to pump each of them up with some syrah and I think the combination of the 3 (in the case of the Grenache based blend) or 2 (the Mourvedre-Syrah) will help things immensely.

Sal suggested perhaps adding a bit of Petite Sirah to the Mourvedre. He makes a small line of his own wines and had too much Petite Sirah, so he was looking to sell off some bulk, and here I was, with some Mourvedre that needed pumping up (the wheeling and dealing never stops. I love it). Peteite Sirah is one wine that rarely needs pumping up - what it usually needs is toning down. We poured a bit of his extra strength petite into the mourvedre and the blend was immediately transformed into...Petite Sirah, with no trace of the Mourvedre discernible. So that impromptu experiment didn't work.

Things were relaxed, I gave Sal a bottle of Dave Potter's Bright Red (he returned the favor with a bottle of his Tempranillo so I made out slightly there) and I was off, in possession of 6 ½ bottles of barrel samples - Ritual Wine Company has inventory!

On my way home I stopped over in the Santa Ynez Valley, as Laurie, a friend from the winemaking class, had alerted me to a slate of winery open houses. I was up for a bit of a party, having accomplished what I set out to do on the trip, and Saturday morning I bee lined down to Laurie's place in Lompoc. Lompoc is a charmless town in the western part of Santa Barbara County, but with the explosive growth of the Santa Rita Hills appellation (probably the top pinot noir area in the Central Coast by now) Lompoc is being transformed into a wine town. This has not paid any dividends yet in terms of Lompoc's aesthetic appeal - there is still a lack of fine dining, nightlife and general outsider appeal. It also tends to be very cold there compared to the Santa Ynez Valley. But Lompoc has definitely developed a wine industry infrastructure: it's the closest town to the Santa Rita Hills and is also home to a group of wineries in an industrial mini-mall that has come to be known as the Wine Ghetto. Our old teacher Norm was in fact having an open house in the Wine Ghetto, and there were some open houses in a small production facility on Santa Rosa Road (which bisects the Santa Rita Hills).

It's an easy hop over to Santa Rosa Road from Laurie's place and so we strolled in our first open house, featuring Cold Heaven and Arcadian. Cold Heaven is a Viognier specialist, started and run by Morgan Clendenen, ex-wife of local wine luminary Jim Clendenen. Jim Clendenen is head of Au Bon Climat, one of the real pioneers of winemaking in Santa Barbara County. He set up shop there in 1982, when it was a total roll of the dice to make wine in the area. The quality of his wines back then went a long way in putting the whole area on the map, wine-wise.

He married Morgan several years ago and when you're married to a well known winemaker, why not start a wine company? She did, and pursued Viognier, which also happens to be among my favorite white varietals. I have a vague plan to try to produce some in 2009, but that's another story.

In an amusingly odd twist to the wife as winemaker story, very shortly after Morgan debuted her wines, another new wine label appeared: Verdad. Verdad is the brainchild of Joanna Lindquist and specializes in wines produced from Spanish varietals. Why is this relevant? Joanna Lindquist is the wife of Bob Lindquist. Bob Lindquist and Jim Clendenen make wine in the same facility at Bien Nacido Ranch (which is also home to almost 1000 acres of top quality vineyards and an additional winery besides Jim and Bob's); Bob started his venture (Qupe Cellars) at the same time Jim started Au Bon Climat and Bob is not only a Santa Barbara County pioneer like Jim but also a Rhone varietal pioneer: Qupe was one of the very first California wineries to make a large scale commitment to syrah; today Qupe makes a number of syrahs as well as a slew of other wines from Rhone grapes. Bob and Jim have been friends for many years and have done collaborative wine ventures over the years as well as having shared their facility.

Thus I found it interesting that Morgan and Joanna both got into the wine biz at roughly the same time. Did one inspire the other? Were they hanging out and decided it simultaneously? Is it a coincidence? Did Jim and Bob place a bet to see which wife could produce wine first?

As a final family footnote  Bob's son Ethan also produces wine now as well, a very tasty sangiovese and sangio-syrah blend. I believe he has another son that's the winemaker at Tres Hermanos winery in Foxen Canyon.

I've always liked Morgan's Viogniers and she was pouring 5 or 6 at the open house, which is roughly 5 or 6 more than most wineries have on offer. We recognized some fellow winos from the area (one of the other recipients of the Vandale Sangiovese, David the home winemaker, was in fact pouring for Morgan), so I decided to bring in my little carafe of syrah. I had brought it for Norm to try (we were hitting Norm's next), but I thought I'd bring it in for some people at the open house. After getting lubed on Viognier (there's a phrase you don't hear often) I was feeling expansive and naturally, in a room full of industry players I decided to show that I was a player too. I poured some small sips all around, and even offered some to complete strangers - good times all around.

The syrah met with positive response although I didn't expect anyone to come out and insult it. I was vaguely reminded of the my old musician days, when meeting prospective bandmates involved pulling out a cassette and playing it, while everyone nodded and listened. You would praise whatever music was being played, even if you hated it, just because musicians are so sensitive about those things, and so it goes with something like a neophyte's barrel sample.

Following a sample of the very nice Arcadian pinot noirs it was off to Norm's open house. Norm was showing off his ever expanding line of pinot noir, including a 2008 barrel sample that was my personal favorite, from a new vineyard near Santa Maria. As usual, his wines ranged from very good to great. I offered him some syrah and he appeared to be fairly impressed by it (again you never know for sure, unless someone would jump up and demand a case... right now!). I sure was enjoying handing out these tastes of my new wine. Naturally things will change in around 14 months, when the enjoyment will derive from people plunking down hard currency for a finished wine. Hopefully the free sample phase of my career will have mostly passed by then.

We had a great time at Norm's and closed down his open house, helping to finish up all the stray wine. Laurie and I ended up at dinner with a few others in Los Olivos; I brought a bottle of (yep) Dave Potter's Bright Red. The Bright Red was serving me well in a variety of social situations -I left a bottle for Jason, who had let me use his Berkeley house the previous 2 days while he and his wife were out of town. The dinner went well and we drove back to Laurie's slowly, after which we ended the evening by talking about Things over a couple of glasses of Ritual Wine Company 2008 Mourvedre.

I've once again contacted the Fess Parker people to arrange for moving my wines down to Santa Maria. No real downside to it, as the money I save on bottling will pay for the shipping, which will run around $600, according to the outfit recommended by the Fess Parker people themselves.

After the last visit, wherein I tasted the barrel samples, I briefly reconsidered my Fess Parker decision; Sal was affable and has a certain proprietary attitude towards the wine that I appreciate. In other words he wants to finish the jobs i.e. see them through to completion. But here's the problem, and it's clearly one that's not going away. This person is doing his own thing; he's not listening to a word I tell him about how I want things done. I will readily concede that doing things the way I want them may not make winemaking or even business sense. However I need to get as sense that I'm getting something for my expenditures.

Back in the summertime when all of this was a gleam in my eye over some contracts to buy grapes (and when the national economy was solvent enough to power that gleam for the foreseeable future) I had strolled the GV facility with Sal. I believe it was just after my motley collection of barrels had been installed. I explained to Sal that I wanted to do a barrel ferment for three barrels of syrah, age two of those on their lees and use my best (this is a very relative term when dealing with my stock) barrels for aging in the hopes of producing a "reserve" i.e. a wine that would perhaps justify a somewhat higher price tag (I was thinking $30 instead of $24). He nodded slowly in agreement, impressed by my sage marketing instincts and maverick winemaking attitude. His reaction probably would have been the same if I had suggested dumping a gallon of Welch's grape juice in each barrel to improve complexity.

Of course Sal never did any barrel fermentation of the grapes, and in fact he treated my continued requests with derision in the notorious email he sent impugning myself, my project, and implicitly my entire right to even deign to tell him what to do or even purchase grapes and start a wine project.

I knew that almost no one did barrel fermentations of syrah. It's a tedious process and in most cases would probably not have a positive effect. It's also labor and space intensive and leaves you with a spent useless barrel, since usually you pop off the top of the barrel to shovel in the grapes and manage the cap. I really just wanted to see what it would taste like, since by all accounts it would taste different. Some very tasty and interesting pinot noirs I'd had in California (notably Arcadian and J Wilkes) use partial barrel ferments in their winemaking so I was very curious (Arcadian and J Wilkes use different methods. I believe J Wilkes does a small lot of 100% barrel fermented juice and then blends in back in to the tank fermented batch while Arcadian ferments the whole lot in tank and then transfers it to barrel for the last 5 or 10% of fermentation. I may have this backward. Or wrong.)

Similarly there are any number of small producers of all kinds of wine in France who are making hand made wines the way Dad and Granddad did, and this frequently includes barrel ferments. So it's not going to hurt anything from what I can see.

Barrel fermentation is used much more widely in white wine. It's commonplace in both France and California to do white barrel ferments and if I had requested a white barrel ferm it no doubt would have been taken more seriously by Sal. I think.

What does barrel fermentation really do for a wine? Barrels allow varying degrees of micro-oxygenation, the key process. Allegedly this will give the wines a certain softer mouth feel and depth of flavor; if you do it in newer oak of course you will get more integrated oak flavors, possibly too many of them. The barrel fermentation process, while allowing the same sort of micro-oxygenation as the aging process, will have a different effect because of the different and volatile chemical reactions taking place.

When I was talking to the home-winemaker oriented people in Camarillo they had a very home-centric solution: they advised me to just throw a bunch of oak chips into the fermentation vat and Voila, barrel fermentation!

Is it all about the barrel fermentation? Of course not. My wine venture is eerily reminiscent to me of a peripheral episode in someone else's life:

I have a stepbrother named Peter in Toronto (actually my stepfather's other stepson from his first marriage, sort of a stepbrother once removed). I'm friendly with him and we see each other from time to time but we don't stay in constant touch; Peter is 24 years my senior. He's a radiologist by trade, a very successful and respected one. He's also one of the most intelligent and well-educated people I've ever known.

Around 20 years ago I saw Peter at a family gathering in California. By this time I was almost 30 and well established in the software business. He told me he was developing a medical billing software package.

Although by this time I felt I knew most things about software development, I actually knew very little, certainly compared to what I've learned since. One thing I did know that hasn't changed over time is that serious software projects take a lot of time, money and expertise. Peter's software experience was that of an end-user, like most people. He had investigated many packages and come away unsatisfied, especially when it came to programs optimized for the arcane Canadian system, which consisted primarily of dealing with various government bureaucracies. Peter had decided to roll his own - he knew exactly how it should work so what could the problem be?

I was astounded that Peter would undertake this project and honestly I was skeptical but also fascinated. Could he pull this off? I thought of Ferruccio Lamborghini, the tractor magnate who started a car firm to rival Ferrari. I also thought Peter might be naïve as far as the commitment it would take to pull this off.

I never really got into the details of Peter's project until much later but every time I asked him or my stepfather about it he was indeed still on the case.

To summarize the story, Peter's software company finally made its first sale roughly two years ago. About that time I took a trip to Toronto with my girlfriend, and Peter showed me what he had. At that time he had a small room (no bigger than a very large master bathroom really) next to his Radiology clinic with 5 Indian programmers in it (one of them acted as supervisor of the others). The project was costing him $22,000 a month to sustain. It was on its third platform. It had no installations except for Peter's office, which served as the beta (testing) facility. According to Peter the only person in the world who knew how to fully use the program was his office manager, who had to deal with it to run Peter's practice. At that time I had the sneaking suspicion that Peter was still maintaining his practice for two reasons: to fund the software and more importantly, to keep the software alive, since that was its only installation. Peter is over 70 and had he retired from Radiology at that time there was a very strong likelihood the software would have retired along with him, rendering 20 years of work and investment nothing more than a rankling footnote in his life.

Although Peter made a good living as a radiologist, he confided to me that had he not inherited a large sum of money from his father along the way the software venture would have bankrupted him some time ago.

The last time I discussed Peter's software venture with him he had indeed made some sales, I'm sot sure how many, I believe between 10 and 20. By this time there were many software packages in Canada optimized for medical billing. He'd sold his practice, although I believe he still owns the software business, having finally evolved into a software executive heading a small boutique operation. So, twenty years later and probably several million dollars poorer Peter is a bit of a software success. It's certainly a cautionary tale. Of course I'll run out of time and money long before numbers like 20 years and millions of dollars are bandied about.

I can understand Sal the winemaker's attitude - to him I'm just a dilettante like Peter who decided he can do better without knowing what he's getting into. For me to tell him what to do would be the equivalent of Peter giving me tips on how to code a program. But I don't want or need to do better, I just want to do it well. And I can do the winemaking myself in the future at some point. Peter would always be at the mercy of his programming staff, A winemaker may differ but I can assure you that developing software professionally is more complex and requires much more experience than cranking out some good wine. Nevertheless that is largely moot in the current situation.

Sal's opinion came to the surface in the notorious email, which included some personal attacks on myself as well as the project. It was brought on, ironically, by my feeling that I was not being taken seriously and that, since I was shelling out the cash, should at least not be treated like a chump.

The "incident" that set off the hostilities was my gentle correction of Sal's assertion that I had to bring in over 6 tons of grapes to get the 6 ton price break. The cost of processing over 6 tons at the winery was $650 a ton, while less than that was $950. A big difference.

When the syrah was finally harvested Sal sent me this little missive:

Steve Worth brought in 5.78 tons and the cut off for the break down on custom crush pricing is at 6 tons so I sent a couple of our pickers out with him to pick enough to get you over the 6 ton mark.  This guarantees your CC price at $650/ton instead of $950.

This struck me as strange. I've written a lot of software that deals with price break structure so I decided to enlighten him thus:

Just a heads up on how crush pricing (and most agri processing) works:

When something is price tiered by volume any tier price is available to the
client as long as the minimum qty is used. What this means is even if I
brought in say, 4 or 5 tons, the pricing would be $650. However I would pay
for 6 tons. The way tier pricing is set up of course, paying for the smaller
qty at the higher rate is usually more economical (although not at, say, 5
tons in the GV example).

However when something comes in at .22 tons under a price tier it's
essentially irrelevant - just charging me for 6 tons would have been
standard practice.

OK end of accounting lecture ...

Two days later I got a response to that one - telling Sal "how it is" was not my road to peace and prosperity:

It's Sunday night and I'm checking my emails, and wow, you've hit my pet peeve. I really hate being, as you say, lectured to. Custom Crush pricing is pretty much what I say it is, I was trying to do you a favor

You've purchased okay grapes and will get an okay wine, no matter what I do. I can spend all day massaging your latest, greatest lot o grapes, and they will still make an okay wine

Followed by an eviction notice:

I'll get you your crush contract by the end of the week, but there are two contracts to be signed, the crush contract and the storage contract. You don't get a storage contract. I'd like you to begin making other arrangements for barrel storage at another bonded facility

Followed by a personal attack:

I don't think Charlie is nervous about his bin really, I think he's nervous about dealing with you.

(I had reminded him Charlie needed his bin back, Charlie being the Amador County grower)

and of course:

I feel as if you're trying to tell me how to do my job and not appreciating what I've done for you

You're walking into you new project with you eyes closed and I don't think I want to see the outcome

(Both likely true)

Back to barrel fermentation

I'm gonna do 3 barrel ferms for you, and you will pay the standard price set out on the custom price sheet, which by the way was set for Chardonnay producers

Your so called barrel ferms are really pointless. They are usually done by wine makers, as a marketing gimmick

At least the lines of communication were now fully open - I'm sure this will forever hold the record my longest Sal-produced email.

Things have been a little poisoned since then of course. I phoned Sal 2 days later and we had a long talk. This had come right after the global financial meltdown and everyone has been a little testy since - the mood of the country is pretty dour to say the least. Sal also remarked that he had to put his old dog down that day so he was extra surly. Fair enough I guess, at this point I just wanted to assuage him to the point where I could deal with him rationally again.

During the phone conversation he also mentioned the mourvedre grapes seemed to come in a little light in color, but it turned out he liked the syrah, a mild reversal from the "OK grapes" description he'd used previously.

Following the phone conversation I sent him a follow-up email, stating I still wanted to do the barrel ferments. He ignored that request of course.

The eviction notice has been rescinded, as I thought it would be after he calmed down but there are two problems still extant:

I still haven't received an invoice or contract to cover the crush fees and Sal has not answered my last 2 emails, which deal mostly with my requesting a contract or invoice. Since I'm used to dealing with clients as a consultant, I'm astounded that I can be ignored in this fashion. But I understand the issues:

Sal is a consultant at GV - he gets to bring his own clientele, consisting of some small to medium sized producers, but in addition his contract requires him to deal with GV's clients. I'm a GV client despite the fact that I've never dealt with anyone at GV besides Sal. I haven't even met anyone, except one of the owners, briefly. It turns out GV actually only has one employee - the cellar worker (known semi-affectionately in the trade as cellar rats). Everyone else is either a consultant (the controller/accountant) or related to one of the owners (the owners and their various wives and children take turns staffing the tasting room, doing paperwork, etc). By Sal's account they are somewhat broke, and I'm sure the economic crisis isn't helping things. By anyone's account they don't know I exist, even though I'm their client, since I'm sure they would be more aggressive in collecting their crush fees if they did. It's up to Sal to get the paperwork initiated but since he has no real motivation to do it, it's not getting done (he apparently does get a commission of sorts for dealing with GV's clients but I'm not sure he has full confidence in receiving it) - Sal's incentive is to deal with his own clients, and also to deal with GV's estate wine production, which comprises a fair amount of wine (they have 32 acres under cultivation).

I'm sure Sal won't let me take the wine out of there without settling up but at the same time he's not taking any steps to get me settled up. So my wine is being held hostage by this absurd Catch 22. It's all moot until I get a contract from Fess Parker anyway, and the woman I'm dealing with there never returns calls or emails either. Is it me? Is it the wine industry? Is it the depression everyone's in because of the economy?

As a footnote to the soap opera Sal remarked to me that he was taking over management of Steve Wirth's vineyard in return for some grapes next year and that it had great potential. He recommended to me that I reserve my allocation for next year now, as he would be bringing some other winery guys over to look at it.

I have in fact reserved another 6 tons for 2009 with Roger, who handles Steve Wirth's grape sales. How I will pay for the grapes and processing is up in the air, as my consulting income has gone from pretty steady to exactly zero in the last two months. I did email Roger with the news that Sal would be managing Steve Wirth's vineyard - this was met with confusion by Roger, who assured me Steve does the vineyard farming himself to keep costs down. I'm sure a nice Rashomon-style farce is just waiting to be told.

I've just returned from the first actual tasting of my wine. One hard truth I've learned is that being far away from the wine guarantees that I have little control over the winemaking process. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Despite our soap opera-ish dust up a few weeks ago Sal and I both agree on one thing at least - he's the winemaker and I'm not. In fact what I really am this go round is a negociant. Having enough on my plate already, I would almost certainly have made a mess of the winemaking process this go round.

Almost to a man (and woman) everyone I know personally remarked in advance "I'm sure the wines will be good". I presume this sentiment exists because I'm known for drinking good wine. There is some truth to this in that I have no intention of bottling and trying to sell a wine I wouldn't drink myself. The problem is, what if the wine is crappy now?

It has to be said that I was extremely nervous about the wine. I (and everyone) have tasted plenty of bad wine over the years and I was wondering if perhaps my wines were terrible. After all, the syrah vineyard is completely untested, I'd never tried the mourvedre and there isn't enough of the Grenache (only a little over one barrel) to matter. I was making a contingency plan: if the wine was sub par - walk away now! Since I hadn't paid crush fees it would only be a moderate financial bloodbath, and in the wake of the worldwide economic disaster moderate bloodbaths were to be preferred to large scale ones.

We rolled into the winery late Tuesday morning. It was very quiet there, with no one around but Sal and the cellar hand. This was in direct contrast to my previous visits, when the facility was noteworthy for the hectic bustle and noise. Even though there was a certain energy about it before I must say I liked the placid mood better - things seemed more under control, rows of wines slumbering (most actually still fermenting to some extent) peacefully in barrel.

Only one of my wines was in barrel, the Grenache. The Grenache had come in first, a month earlier than the other two. The syrah had been pressed off and was undergoing malolactic fermentation (ML). The mourvedre was being pressed off as we showed up.

We tasted the mourvedre first, a swig of purplish-gray murk. It tasted about as good as it looked, not unexpected in such a raw state. I could detect some wine like aromas underneath the murky smell and honestly I don't know about this one. I'm optimistic however. What choice do I have?

The syrah was next. Now this is more like it. Nice fruit, good aromas and pretty smooth. Definitely an easy drinker, not destined to be an Important Wine. I'm relieved. If the syrah doesn't work then the whole venture has issues, as the syrah will be bottled by itself and will most probably be a blender for the other two.

We tasted the Grenache last, out of barrel. This one is the most finished, having pretty much concluded both fermentations, and its been in barrel for nearly a month. Very tasty! Not only is the Grenache excellent, but it's in exactly the style I like for this varietal - bright flavors, good acid backbone and on the light side of intense, with nice forward red fruit. How about that wine bullshit!

I only have a little more than one barrel of the Grenache. If I would have a decent amount I'd bottle it on its own (Northern California Jason urged me to bottle a couple of cases of straight Grenache just for private consumption upon tasting it)

I knew the Grenache would be a blender but due to the nice flavors I'm now intending to make it the primary component in what will probably be a three - way G-S-M blend, hoping to preserve those nice flavors while adding some stuffing on the back end.

Of course the high quality of the Grenache is directly related to my limited allocation, as the low yield (due to the frost) apparently is the greatest factor here.

This idea was brought home after Sal let us taste the GV estate syrah. Even though the GV vineyard is only ½ mile from the Wirth vineyard where my syrah is from it was hit very hard by the frost (the Wirth seems to have escaped for whatever reason). Their total yield was only 1.1 tons per acre, a ridiculously small quantity for a wine that will sell for around $20. We tasted it and ... it was great, which I guess is some consolation to the winery owners, who will of course take a financial beating on it. Similarly the adjacent syrah vineyard was harvested at 5 tons an acre (owned by the original owners of the winery and its vineyards) and it was terrible.

It's always illuminating to have tastings like this. Syrah has a reputation of being able to give a generous yield without serious degradation in quality but clearly it's a matter of degree. Certainly the quality of pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon is acutely sensitive to yield volume; a typical high end pinot vineyard will be farmed to yield 2 to 21/2 tons per acre whereas conventional wisdom dictates that you can get away with 3 or 4 tons per acre for even high end syrah. This may be a reason why the top pinot growers in SB County are now getting $4500+ per acre for grapes while a reputable syrah site will fetch around half of that. And this is reflected in the price of course.

It brings up a conundrum for any grower. If you own Domaine Romanee Conti or Chateau Lafite you know what yield generates the highest quality grapes: that's going to be your yield in a normal year of production because you're assured of getting several hundred dollars per bottle of your finished product. Maintaining the quality and reputation of the wine from a top estate is far more important that concerns about the effect of low yields on the bottom line.

What if you're a small grower in Amador County like my guy Charlie? The Grenache turned out great but what does it matter if it generated a loss financially? It's a tricky situation because if Charlie ratchets up the volume next year to make up for the loss the quality will most assuredly suffer. If he delivers a sub par product that could have lasting effects that far exceed any short term gain - word gets around. This balancing act is an ongoing headache for most mainstream growers supplying the great majority of wineries. On the high end the winemaker will probably dictate the yield, harvest date, etc based on long years of experience and on the low end you just crank up the volume (Basically you can get 8 to 10 tons per acre from most vineyards if you really want to); your grapes are going into bulk wine, jug wine, homemade wine, crappy wine so let's get those revenues up.

The Charlie situation is keenly important to me because Sal feels Charlie cranked up the volume on the mourvedre, most probably to make up for the Grenache disaster. Since Mourvedre is a very late starter and ripener  it was still dormant during the frost. I hope he didn't, although it makes sense. At this point the mourvedre is the real question mark in the prestigious Ritual 2008 lineup.

A great deal has happened in the last week. The syrah has come in. The mourvedre has come in. I've had a falling out with Sal the winemaker. I've reconciled with Sal the winemaker. Sal has informed me the grapes are mediocre. Sal has informed me the grapes might be pretty good.

My questions about Sal started when he sent me an invoice for picking up grapes and barrels as well as for some used barrel racks he sold me.

Some time back Sal had agreed to sell me the racks for $20 each, a good price. When it came time to finally get the racks in August the price had gone to $35. When I asked him about it he said:

I should have mentioned, I bought 80 newer racks for $35 each. I still have enough of the older racks for your needs. They're the same rack, just not as pretty. I'll have your barrels on the racks for $20 each

OK, fair enough I guess. When I got an invoice it was not from GV Cellars but from Galvan Wine Services, an entity I'd never heard of (Sal's last name is Galvan). The invoice was generated from a typical cheap accounting program like QuickBooks or something, but what struck me was the Invoice number: 1001. It is common to being invoice sequences with 1001, just like checks in a new account, and I have a strong suspicion that there had not been 1,000 previous invoices cut by Galvan Wine Services. So I was the first. This struck me as strange, as if Sal was using the winery resources and then marking them up to me on the side with his shiny, new (and fictional?) wine services company?

I paid the invoice but informed Sal I wouldn't expend any more funds to anybody until I saw a contract from the winery for the crush services. He agreed to have it for me upon my scheduled visit, actually meant to be tomorrow. When I was first discussing the crush with him he mentioned all the contracts had to be in and signed by mid August to ensure a place (this is standard for crush contracts), so of course we're way behind. I didn't give it that much thought but as the months went on I was wondering what's going on.

I was getting antsy about the syrah and the main motivation behind my scheduled special guest star cameo up North was to look at the Syrah vineyard and pull the trigger on the picking. I knew the vines were shutting down, so I wanted to identify the ripest and just get those damn grapes in.

Last week Sal visited the vineyard (which is literally across the street from the winery) he decided the grapes were ripe and instructed Steve the vineyard owner to pick. So the syrah came in.

After the syrah was in Sal sent me this update:

Steve Worth brought in 5.78 tons and the cut off for the break down on custom crush pricing is at 6 tons so I sent a couple of our pickers out with him to pick enough to get you over the 6 ton mark.  This guarantees your CC price at $650/ton instead of $950

This seemed odd to me. Why not just charge me for 6 tons? I decided to give Sal a lecture on tier pricing, based on my experience writing software to do said tier pricing.

It went like this:

When something is price tiered by volume any tier price is available to the
client as long as the minimum qty is used. What this means is even if I
brought in say, 4 or 5 tons, the pricing would be $650. However I would pay
for 6 tons. The way tier pricing is set up of course, paying for the smaller
qty at the higher rate is usually more economical (although not at, say, 5
tons in the GV example).

However when something comes in at .22 tons under a price tier it's
essentially irrelevant - just charging me for 6 tons would have been
standard practice.

OK end of accounting lecture ...

Big mistake.

I received back a scathing email, essentially impugning my grapes, myself and everything related to my wine venture. In addition Sal stressed that I could not store my wines after December that I was out of there, evicted, find somewhere else.

It was not a great thing to wake up to Monday morning. My initial reaction was outrage and naturally I composed many scathing emails in my head to really put him in his place. However if I've learned one thing over the years, it's not to do things in the heat of the moment that may impact you for a long time to come so I decided to calm down and think through our new situation. To complicate things Sal's vineyard manager was picking up the mourvedre grapes that very day.

In the midst of his vitriolic email Sal had stressed he would do a professional job on my grapes, but was his heart in it? Would he "forget" to cold soak the grapes? Would he "forget" them out in the sun? These are all thoughts that go through the mind of the stressed out wine entrepreneur.

I sent Sal a short response expressing my dismay at his feelings and assuring him I would move the barrels out in December. Since I needed a report on the weight of the grapes, as well as hopefully a lab panel I decided to wait a day and then maybe sent him another email asking for this data, hoping he'd cooled down. In the meantime I sent a query to Armando at Fess Parker. I had met with Armando originally to discuss crush services; we had both decided I was too small an operator for that but he had mentioned that they could perhaps help me

afterwards in terms of storage and bottling.

Armando seems to be a consummate pro; he had been sympathetic to my crazy wine venture, probably having seen it many times. As I reflect ion the difference between the organized, state-of-the-art Fess Parker operation and the frantic chaos up North it certainly brings up some questions in my mind as to where these barrels should ultimately be, Sal's eviction notice notwithstanding.

Armando emailed me back in the affirmative, so there was one option. In the meantime I recounted the whole sad story of my falling out to my girlfriend Adina and my Berkeley bud Jason, 2 supporters and close observers of the venture. They were both shocked at the latest plot twist and urged me to reconcile with Sal.

After spending Tuesday mulling it over I decided to call Sal directly and apologize. We had a long chat, during which Sal regained his original enthusiasm for the project, which seems to involve, as usual, a lot of self-advertising. At least he's back on it; clearly having an adversarial relationship with him would be a disaster.

Syrah watch 2008 continues. The national events of the last several weeks have roiled the economy and placed the entire wine venture in jeopardy. With the collapse of the financial system credit markets have frozen. This impacts me two ways: first, the software work has completely dried up, and it happened fast. 6 weeks ago I was confident that I would make enough money from consulting to sail through a second round of grape purchases and custom crush charges, in addition to other requirements, such as eating and paying the mortgage. Now I'm wondering if my soon to be dwindling savings account (which includes funds earmarked for Ritual Wine Company) will be used solely for living expenses.

The second fun fact is that my chances of getting some sort of a loan have dropped close to zero. A bank will not take a flier on a barely capitalized wine venture in a time of economic contraction and unavailable credit. This has me depressed and distracted instead of focusing on the issue at hand, the current crush. It almost seems pointless if I can't do another crush next year, and that's the way it's looking in my worst case scenario.

Speaking of the issue at hand, my fears about the syrah failing to ripen also continue to fester. During the period between committing to the syrah and beginning the various expenditures (barrels, additional grapes, etc) I seriously considered abandoning the venture while I still could. I have been glad I stuck it out but if this unknown syrah vineyard bites me I may be back to weighing an exit. Yes, I share the national malaise, as well as my personal syrah malaise.

This past weekend I attended the bi-annual SB County Vintners Association wine festival. The vintners association puts on two of these events every year - the spring festival is called the Vintners Festival while the one in fall is called "Celebration of Harvest". The format and participants are largely the same - there are a number of local wineries and eateries proffering samples, there's a silent auction with rare bottles (usually large format) and other goodies (dinners, tours, etc). Bands play. People drink and eat. People drink some more. My friend AJ and I go every time; it's always fun and I get to meet up with a lot of friends and acquaintances in Santa Ynez Valley, as well as sample the latest wine offerings from both the established producers and new upstarts.

I had a chance to talk with Blair Fox this time around. Blair Fox is the head winemaker at Fess Parker (recently hired I believe), which didn't interest me. What did interest me is that he also his own label and is known as a syrah specialist. I made my way over to the Blair Fox Cellars Table; there were three vineyard designate syrahs on offer.

Blair Fox himself is a burly, somewhat biker looking guy, but in a very clean-cut way; he was happy to talk to me about syrah, a topic that has been on my mind for some time.

I asked if all his grapes were in - it turns out his last lot had come in just the previous day. Were they shriveled? Yes indeed, although I think "puckered" is the word we syrahistes prefer. So there are some other late ripeners out there.

Blair works with pretty small lots, enabling him to pretty much hand make everything and do manual punch downs for all the syrahs. It's nice when you have the day job supplying the cash flow (and winemaking facilities). Something to keep in mind, since 2/3 of my syrah will be in a big tank with electric pumpovers. Luckily syrah loves abuse.

All three of the Blair Fox syrahs were great, possibly my three favorite wines of the festival. Usually a pinot noir gets my best-in-show award but the Blair Fox syrahs were just that good.

In the midst of my wine venture I have continued to be much the same wino I've always been. I like to go fairly long periods without drinking much. I get into shape, I feel clean, I'm a little bored. These are offset by periods of intense consumption. Such as the last 6 days or so. Naturally I have considered my potential lifestyle change. If the wine thing works I'm not going to wake up, have a strong cup of coffee and diddle my computer all morning. It will be off to the winery, vineyard, sales call ("Please buy a few cases of wine, Boutique Wine Shop Person") or who knows what else.

Darren, one of my teachers in my final wine class, Lab Analysis, remarked often that since becoming a wine industry professional his taste for fine wine had gradually waned; He is in fact a spirits man at this point. Naturally he offered the qualifier you would expect: "I still like wine". This wasn't convincing; the fact that he needed to say it implied the opposite.

This alarmed me a bit. If the price of success in the wine industry is the loss of my general interest in wine, that price is too high. It was curious hearing Darryl say it and I realize that there must be quite a few wine pros who don't like wine. Why should they? It might make them even more effective if they didn't like it - no sloshed tasting room employees stealing sips all day, or even better, no sloshed winery staff.

So I've thought about it. I think about all the successful and dedicated wine pros who have kept their enthusiasm and wonder for fine wine, and discovering more of it. I'm convinced they're in the majority. I will be one of them. I also plan to be a totally sober winery employee, assuming the as-yet theoretical winery. That's important.

One of the funny things about my college wine experience is that when I moved to Solvang part-time I consciously decided I would not drink wine regularly. Even though I was in the heart of my favorite wine region, I was here to learn, and study, and not to blow a ton of cash on Mike's wine fantasy camp.

I did it too. I was so worried about falling into one of my bad wino habits that I didn't have so much as a glass of wine for several weeks after starting school. I dropped some weight, I started jogging once a week (this was big, believe me), my attendance and attitude at class was impeccable. What drinking I did when in Solvang was mostly reserved to various class functions. By class functions I mostly mean various tastings or parties by the winemaking class, all of which were great fun (I was around 18 people who at least equaled my own wino proclivities).

I should mention a wine soaked class "function" that really was a scholastic learning experience: the intro class took a field trip to Sunstone Winery, a very chic family winery, and they lined up their whole catalog for the class to taste. That's right,18 tastings coming right up, with the assistant winemaker there to tell us about them. We then took a tour of the winery; they were in middle of crush and Sunstone's generosity was really something. A field trip like that just makes you feel good.

I completed my first semester with straight A's (Should not be overestimated. Most everyone got an A), minimal wine consumption and a welcome expansion in my wine knowledge.

There was a huge gap between the first and second semester. This was the holiday season, meaning I changed from a lean, mean learning machine to a, yes, partying guy. By the time the second semester started I had also contracted a vicious case of the flu that took me 2 weeks to recover from. In the meantime, I had gone from 2 ½ courses to one (actually ½ semester courses). The winemaking course was only 8 weeks, and the Lab Analysis course was 8 weeks as well; they overlapped slightly but what it meant was just one course active at a time. I was dead set on completing the winemaking course, so I was going to resume my part-time residency. I could only find the Lab Analysis course as an additional wine course to complement the Saturday morning winemaking class. Lab Analysis was Wednesday night, so in the weeks that they overlapped I would have serious downtime. And in any case I would leisure time on my hands in any case, since just going up and coming right back down was too grueling, plus I liked hanging out at the Solvang house.

The main thing someone like me does with leisure time in the Santa Ynez Valley is drink a little wine here and there, so I gradually got into the habit of visiting wine bars and restaurants much more frequently than the previous semester.

The unanticipated wine consumption came about from the winemaking source. While we had spent the first semester visiting vineyards, tasting grapes, bringing in grapes to process, we now had 5 barrels of finished wines, happily aging in casks right next door. Part of the class, naturally, was to occasionally taste what we had, and proffer predictions on ultimate style, further winemaking strategies (Filter? Fine? Blend? Throw out?) and anything else related to dealing with our inventory.

Here is what is most interesting about being next door to all this wine. Not only did the class own the wine, but there were at least three classmates entrusted with the key to the winery facility. They were liberal with loaning the key or providing and it soon became common for a late morning barrel sampling session for those of us so inclined. The morning drinking is not a good habit to get into, but I enjoyed it. It was really the only time in my life I have drunk alcohol before lunch. And honestly the tastings were frequently directly related to the class curriculum and I learned a lot. Frequently but not always of course.

The Lab Analysis class was on the second floor of AHC's spanking new science building, about 100 yards from the winery. The Lab Analysis class was two hours or so. The first half was lecture, the second half was lab time. There was a 15 minute break between each half.

You can guess what started happening. There were about 10 of us from winemaking class in Lab Analysis and ... we needed to check our wine. It's right there. What helped our justification for essentially drinking during school was that the lab time was chaotic, with the whole class (about 25 people) crowding around the instructor demonstrating a typical lab panel for wine or grape juice. These demos left a lot of us completely confused, so there were even a couple of occasions towards the end where we stopped going back to class and just lounged around the winery facility enjoying our barrel samples. It was great camaraderie, and those lab sessions were driving me crazy.

It was funny how I went from sharpened idealist ready for knowledge to a tipsy part time student who was drinking during each of his (admittedly wine-based) classes. Will the same arc occur in a winery - starting a crush working hard, eagle eyed, focused, only to be lying around 6 months later experiencing the inventory firsthand more often than not?

Nah.

I'm in a holding period between the Grenache fermentation and the syrah harvest. The syrah is the crux of the whole venture so naturally I'm a  little tense. Combined with the stress of the financial collapse and various family issues I'm all atwitter these days.

Sal has revised his opinion of the Grenache somewhat, from "bubblegum" to "I'm liking it much better". This is good news, assuming a substantial qualitative upgrade from "bubblegum" to "much better" than bubblegum.

Roger my Syrah contact emailed me yesterday with his outlook on the pick date: at least 2 more weeks, maybe 3. As long as it gets there it's fine with me - I just want some ripe syrah at this point. Roger has asserted repeatedly that the syrah grapes have to be shriveled to really be ripe. Shriveled is really one small step from itty bitty raisins so it's a fine line.

I have never personally harvested syrah. I have harvested cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese, pinot noir, chardonnay, merlot and a bit of pinot grigio. Admittedly my experience with harvesting firsthand is very shallow - of all the grapes that  have fallen to my deft clipper moves Sangiovese is the only one I have personally harvested more than once.

The best grape I ever personally picked, in terms of market value, is without a doubt the Kathryn Kennedy cabernet sauvignon. Kathryn Kennedy Cab sells for around $150 a bottle by now I think and at the time (1998) it was already well over $100 per bottle. All of my harvest experience is directly related to either my experience with Kathryn Kennedy Winery or the AHC winemaking course.

The history of the Kathryn Kennedy winery is unique and iconoclastic. Some time ago Kathryn Kennedy divorced her wealthy developer husband. I don't know the terms of the settlement but I do know she received their home in Saratoga. More than a home, though; it's a home on about 12 picturesque acres, in the heart of one of California's most desirable "town and country" communities. Saratoga is a very wealthy community of rolling hills dotted with what could be described as gentleman haciendas - large ranch estates dotted with fruit and nut tress, vineyards, and one or several very nice houses.

Kathryn Kennedy received one of these in her divorce settlement. She decided to plant a cabernet sauvignon vineyard on 7 acres on the lower part of the estate. She had decided to reinvent herself as a winemaker. Within a few years Kathryn Kennedy winery was operating out of a building on the estate and it was essentially a one or two person operation for many years. The winery only produced one wine: a 100% estate bottled Cabernet Sauvignon. It was very expensive. Production was very limited. That's about what I know of the original history.

Kathryn Kennedy Winery came to my attention because I was such a fan of Ridge Winery and their ATP wine club. Since I came up every year for the 4^th of July wine club party I stayed overnight in the area and spent the next day tasting at the other local wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There were not very many, and still aren't.

When I first started coming up for the Ridge event I had studied a map of the local wineries to see where there was additional tasting for "Day 2 - Santa Cruz Mountain Debauch". In the mid 1990's there were perhaps only about 7 or 8 wineries with tasting rooms, and a handful more that had no tasting rooms. One of the ones that captured my attention was Kathryn Kennedy Winery, essentially due to its complete mystery: There they were, on all the maps of The Santa Cruz Mountains appellation but:

There was no public tasting room

There was no tasting or touring by appointment

There was possibly no retail distribution

There was one wine - the hyper expensive Cabernet Sauvignon, as pricy as the Ridge Montebello Cab. The Montebello is the most pedigreed wine in the appellation by a good margin, not only going back 40 years but even selected for the famous 1973 Paris tasting.

Thus the name Kathryn Kennedy stuck with me over the years. Every time

I looked at an updated vineyard map of the area (there are new winery and vineyard operations popping up in California constantly) the story for Kathryn Kennedy stayed the same. There they were on the map, but: no tasting, no looking, expensive cabernet.

I became connected to Kathryn Kennedy Winery through their Syrah. Syrah? I thought they only made Cabernet. When I had last checked in on them that was the case but a few years later I was reading something or other on wine (perhaps on the internet) when a passing reference was made to the 1996 Kathryn Kennedy Syrah, in very complimentary tones. Kathryn Kennedy! I couldn't believe it. I still had a deep curiosity about this mysterious place. The syrah was $38, so although definitely high priced, much less than the triple digit cab. I called the winery and spoke to winemaker Marty Mathis, who is Kathryn Kennedy's son.

Kathryn Kennedy had recently retired after years of turning out her Cabernet and Marty had taken over. Marty had ambitious plans for the winery operations. Kathryn Kennedy was already middle-aged when she started the winery but Marty was in his early 30's and had grown up essentially at the winery. It was time to spread their wings.

Marty was affable and happy to chat about winery things in general. I had been so curious for so long that all of my dormant interest was now reawakened, and I quizzed him about winery stuff. We chatted for a bit and he remarked that, yes, the syrah was just great. He got the grapes from an old farmer who had a large parcel of farmland right above the Kathryn Kennedy Estate. The farmer was a distant cousin of the Mondavi family and at one point he'd been advised by family members who would know that he should tear up some of those low income nut tress and plant sangiovese and syrah. He had done so a few years ago and now Marty was getting some nice syrah grapes.

I ordered a bottle and awaited it with great anticipation. It showed up in a week or so and I took over to my parents' house. They both like a nice glass of wine and my mother is a top cook, in a hearty Central European (i.e. Czech-Slovak-Hungarian) kind of way. I don't recall what we had for dinner but I still recall the taste of the Kathryn Kennedy 1996 Syrah, Maridon Vineyard. Let me put it this way: The Kathryn Kennedy 1996 Syrah, Maridon Vineyard is possibly the best California syrah I have had, and a world-class red wine contender, in my world at least. My stepfather, who was 83 at the time, usually limited himself to 1 glass of wine per meal; he over 2 glasses. This sounds trivial but I can assure you that he stuck to his 1 glass rule religiously (usually). I in fact enjoyed bringing a whole parade of killer wines over, to try to move him into that second glass (it did happen, but very rarely) but although his compliments were copious, his will was strong. With this syrah he poured himself a third glass. He and I were murmuring about the towering quality of this wine through the whole meal. My mother thinks this sort if wine geekery is silly, claiming to not know the difference between various levels of quality. She didn't turn any down either...

My interest was even more piqued. I ordered 2 more bottles. Now, even today a $38 California Syrah is definitely a slightly pricy (although, alas, not at all uncommon) item. In 1998 it was, for all I know, the priciest California syrah, certainly one of the dearest at least. KK would never be a cheap date. And I couldn't afford to go crazy on the quantity, although there are always wines you look back on and say "yeah, it cost a lot but I sure wish I'd gotten (2? 3? 20?) times as much".

The next 2 syrahs were, yes, great, prodigious, amazing. By this time I wanted to experience this operation firsthand. I had spoken with Marty again subsequently and we were on familiar terms so I called him and offered my services for the upcoming crush. He readily accepted my offer of free labor.

I rented a motel room in Cupertino for Friday and Saturday night and rolled up bright and early at 7:00 AM Saturday morning. I was quickly put on grape picking duty - Marty had specified that weekend because the lynchpin estate Cabernet vineyard was to be picked and crushed. Off I went to the estate vineyard, picking the grapes along with a for-hire crew of Mexican farm workers.

Marty was running pretty lean for his crush operations. He had one full time employee at the winery, who was there to supervise the picking crew, ferry bins back and forth, prepare for the crushing and fermentation, etc. In addition there was an old friend of the family, a man in his late fifties, who helped out every year. And me.

Throughout the course of the day I picked grapes. And more grapes. Marty brought in a nice lunch, accompanied by various Kathryn Kennedy wines. In the last few years he had expanded the winery's offerings considerably, by now offering a pair of whites, some additional cabernet and cab franc blends, a malbec blend and of course the syrah. He would also be taking some of Charlie (syrah) Maridon's sangiovese that year. The lunch tasted great, as it always does when you've been doing manual labor all morning, and the wines were generously poured. In the afternoon it was off to the Maridon vineyard to pick sangiovese. I was by now tired of picking grapes (at this writing I am permanently tired of picking grapes. It doesn't take long) and wondering if I had trekked up just to spend a weekend as a migrant worker.

Thankfully by mid-afternoon the grapes were all picked and waiting in several bins outside the small winery building, a barn like structure roughly the size of 2 suburban garages. Marty's permanent employee left at 5:00 or 6:00; in the few hours leading up to the welcome dinner break Marty's friend and myself moved carboys (Sparkletts bottle sized containers frequently used for keeping topping wine or aging small experimental batches), rearranging barrels and yakking about Kathryn Kennedy Winery. Following dinner the crush would commence - roughly 12 tons of cabernet grapes.

Dinner tasted as good as lunch, since I was even more  tired now, and we drank more tasty Kathryn Kennedy wine - all the offerings were very good, although not up to the standards of the syrah. We were not offered any of the syrah or estate cabernet with the meals, nor would I expect any.

The three of us had a relaxing dinner, capped off by tasting barrel samples of something or other (Malbec Port seems to stick in mind but I don't really recall). It was dark by now and Marty cranked up the floodlights and hard rock. Time to go back to work. The bins were waiting outside the winery building: the crushing took place outdoors.

The winery had a very small, slow crusher. Marty told me that this assured gentle handling of the grapes. It also assured slow handling of the grapes. Marty assumed the position near the top of the bin and shoveled grapes into the crusher. The family friend and myself were positioned at the crusher to make sure things didn't jam, pulling stems out of the apparatus and crushed grapes, etc.

By about 8:30 Marty had run out of energy and I took over the grape shoveling. It was terrifically strenuous work but I enjoyed doing it (at first). It felt good to commune with grapes in this way, and have a direct hand in initiating the winemaking process.

We finally finished after 10:00, music still blaring (I guess the neighbors were used to the crush time noise levels), all of us completely exhausted. The next day I was to rendezvous with Marty at a separate facility up the road in the mountains where he made his whites and stored his barrels. It was to be another full day of hard work.

Since I wasn't coming back to the winery Marty gave me a case of wine for my hard work; I really had expected only a bottle or two but he was more than generous. Included in my booty were 2 bottles of 1995 estate Cab (!) and 3 more of the magical 1996 Syrah, as well as a nice cross section of the current releases.

I slowly drove back to the motel wondering how I would muster the strength for another day; I really felt the exhaustion deep in my bones. After a predictably sound night's sleep I managed to be up bright and early the next day; Off I went to the to the remote facility. On my way out there it started raining and by the time I got there it was a full deluge. Since much of this facility's operations took place outside, the day's activities were cancelled. I felt like I'd gotten a reprieve from the governor, as just driving out there had reminded me how tired I was from the day before.

Thus I really only worked 1 day on the Kathryn Kennedy crush, and received a handsome package of wine. I felt slightly guilty about this (but not too guilty). I developed a hernia shoveling all those grapes, which helped to assuage any bit of guilt I might have felt.

In addition to my souvenir hernia another result of my weekend with Marty was the termination of my corporate IT job when I came in Monday morning. I had been slated to be let go for some time, and the person who had been hired to "re-engineer" the company (a popular and abused term in the nineties) had been treating me as persona non grata since he'd arrived six months previously, I had skipped work Friday and had only told my assistant of my general whereabouts. Apparently re-engineering guy had flown into a rage when hearing about my wine crush weekend. I'd been waiting for the axe to fall so it was no great shock to finally get fired; between my first crush experience, the hernia and the firing it was quite a weekend.

Before the Kathryn Kennedy experience I'd never really handled wine grapes close up. Cabernet grapes are very regal - handsome small bluish-purple globes that feel velvety to the touch. I was struck by the contrast between the Cab grapes and the Sangiovese I picked later in the day. In contrast to the deluxe Cabernet package the Sangiovese really were just ... grapes. They didn't look any different from table grapes; even the color was banal - a typical dark shiny purple you might see at your local grocery store compared to the impeccable bluish pastel of the cabernet.

I though about these and other grapes when Roger told me about the mandatory shriveling required for ripe for syrah. Yes, they're all different. Any skepticism I might have towards this shriveling idea was mitigated by a few bunches in the vineyard that had already shriveled. Lo and behold, these forlorn looking specimens tasted much better than the healthy, fulsome grapes that dominated the vines - the shriveled shall inherit the Earth.

About this time I had dinner in a much touted local wine bistro in Glendale, near my house (I live near the Los Angeles - Glendale border). Myself and a friend had taken a third friend out to a birthday dinner. The wine list featured syrah from , yes, Michael Larner's vineyard. My teacher, whose name I had been dropping until fairly recently, was represented. The syrah was excellent and it turned out to be a label run by the bistro's wine director - the bistro features a wine shop and attendant wine bar in addition to the main restaurant. We called him over to compliment him on the wine and of course I remarked that I had taken a class from Mike Larner a few months ago (there I was back to dropping that name. At least it was legitimate this time). He knew Mike's family and had gotten a line on the grapes a few years ago, so we chatted about Santa Barbara grapes in general and dealing with the Larner Vineyard grapes specifically. The wine director / winemaker guy mentioned, sure enough, that he had learned in the last couple of years that the syrah grapes had to literally shrivel up before they could achieve full ripeness and be ready for harvest; since I got this tidbit of knowledge directly after visiting the vineyard the week before I continue to be optimistic about the ultimate ripeness of my syrah grapes.

As a postscript to the Kathryn Kennedy experience, all of the wines in my case ranged from good to superb, with the exception of the estate Cabernet. As has happened to me so often, I was sorely disappointed by a highly touted Cabernet/Bordeaux , both bottles not showing much of anything. I even waited until 2003 to open the first cab, just to let it age a bit. My expectations were low by the time I opened Cab number 2 two years later and it tasted identical to the first one - my first impression was no fluke.

The 3 syrahs Marty gave me were all fantastic. The following year the price was hiked to over $60, thus ending my relationship with it. I did go up to the winery a few years later for one of their rare public events and managed to taste the current syrah offerings. It was a blisteringly hot day, so tannic red wines were not really hitting the spot. The event was outside and my whole time there what I really wanted was a cold beer.

 I just took a quick look at the Kathryn Kennedy website and sure enough the Maridon Syrah continues to be on offer, at $65.

I spent this week in Northern California, a visit intended to look at my grapes and to a lesser extent remind the growers and Sal the winemaker that I'm on the case. The remote control strategy for this wine project can be stressful and I anticipate several more forays up and down the state. Just add it to that "miscellaneous expenses" line item on the business plan.

Jason and I rolled up to Amador County on Wednesday morning; I'd spent Monday and Tuesday on personal visits to some family and friends on the Coast and now I was ready to work. Sort of. Observe and taste was more like it. We'd booked a night at a nice Bed and Breakfast in Jackson (about 10 miles from the vineyard), so I wasn't really roughing it.

The vineyard where I'm getting my grenache and mourvedre grapes is owned by Charlie, who has a nice residence on his sprawling vineyard spread. I had spoken to him once on the phone and exchanged a few emails before committing to the grape purchase. In other words I was winging it, per usual. I'd decided to try to snag some other Rhone grapes after committing to the syrah and the natural fits were Grenache and Mourvedre, the standard Cote du Rhone and Chateauneuf du Pape blenders (Grenache tends to be the majority grape in those wines so I guess it's not really a blender in those cases).

Amador County is yet another wine district in California, distinguished in recent years by huge high alcohol zinfandels. Like Paso Robles, there is now a trend to growing some Rhone varietals as well, although unlike Paso, Amador still is heavily weighted toward the big boy zins as the main cash cow.

I had found Charlie's grapes in (where else?) Wine Business Monthly. He was advertising up to 2 tons of Grenache, and 2 tons sounded about right in terms of my budget, coupled with the fact I didn't know anything about the vineyard or him. We spoke on the phone and he referred me to Mount Aukum winery, an operation in Amador that made a 100% Grenache from that vineyard. I called the winemaker at Mount Aukum, an affable guy named Lance, and he assured me that all was well with Charlie and his Grenache. I ordered a bottle of the Grenache from the Mount Aukum but I committed to the grapes prior to getting the bottle, mostly due to a sense of anxiety about not getting some Grenache. There were no other offers of Grenache in WBM and I knew it was getting late in the game in terms of grape allocations and contracts.

Charlie's vineyard is in the Shenandoah Valley district, right next to Renwood, one of the best known wineries in the area. Renwood is one of the 6 original wineries in the area we were subsequently told, although apparently they were now owed by an out of state corporation. They make about 12 zinfandels as well as numerous other wines, including a good Barbera I'd had in the past. So off to the Shenandoah Valley we went.

Amador County resembles many other wine regions as it features rolling hills, vineyards, tasting rooms and little country roads. One way it does not resemble many California wine regions is that instead of quaint little towns dotted with tasting rooms, boutiques and cafes, the area is interspersed with somewhat less charming towns that are as likely to feature auto parts outlets as tasting rooms. Even the most touristy town, Sutter Creek, is right next to Jackson, a municipality whose main appeal seems to be its sleepiness. Even Sutter Creek goes very light on the tasting room presence (I only saw one), although it does seem to be a good place to shop for antiques or wander among Victorian gold rush architecture.

We were headed to the outskirts of Plymouth, a tiny town that clearly was not tourist oriented in the slightest. As we left the town proper and climbed into the Sierra foothills the views improved markedly.

After I had committed to the Grenache Charlie had offered me some Syrah and Mourvedre as well. Of course I have plenty of Syrah but the Mourvedre sounded appealing and I committed to 1 ton. So I was going to look at both Grenache and Mourvedre.

Northern California had experienced a massive heat wave the previous week, so Charlie had emailed me that the sugar levels had shot up on the Grenache and he wanted to pick soon. I called Sal the winemaker and he counseled patience, saying all the growers had become jittery and that the damage had been done regardless, so they should just wait for the vines to rehydrate the grapes and calm down.

I had talked to Charlie on the phone Tuesday to remind him of my visit. He had another surprise for me besides his urgent desire to Pick those Grapes Now! Some weeks earlier he had sent me an email saying that due to lower yields I could only expect 1 ton instead of 2. On the phone he now said I could expect ½ ton. He also claimed he had sent me an email saying as much, a complete fabrication. Once again I was feeling rather disrespected in the wine world. It almost didn't make sense to get ½ ton of Grenache. Almost but not quite, as now the strategy would have to be to make a Mourvedre with whatever Grenache I got as a blender.

Thus hot on the news of my reduced allocation I was in a bit of a sour mood regarding Charlie and his grapes.

We wound our way up to Renwood Winery, their enormous tanks gleaming in the sun; down a small road we found to entrance to Charlie's spread. Once on his property it was another ¼ mile up a dirt road until we reached a large Cape Cod style house. I rang the bell and, after some excited barking, a tall middle aged man answered the door. Charlie. My Northern climes grape vendor.    

After greetings all around and availment of bathroom facilities we stood around playing with the dog while Charlie paced around nervously fielding calls from what seemed to be more grape customers. From overhearing Charlie's side of the conversation I gleaned that while Charlie wanted to pick now, everyone (like me) wanted to wait a bit. He agreed to pick the following Friday (10 days hence) with a customer clearly more important to him than myself.

We followed him down to the vineyard, back outside the gate we had entered and looked at the Grenache grapes. Sal had told me that unless they were totally raisined, waiting would be advisable, which now seemed the prevailing opinion. The grapes were not raisined but tasted ripe; we all agreed that Friday was the way to go, Charlie disclosed to me that he was shorting everybody (including myself), mostly due to the frost (that damn Santa Barbara County frost, coming back to haunt me 400 miles to the North), and he admitted that he even considered shutting me out completely. Upon hearing this I was glad that I had showed up; if I had remained just an anonymous (and small) customer somewhere to the South he might have done so, but now I was a living, breathing, wine dude, so he felt obligated to get me my grapes. Of course there was also the small matter of breach of contract, as he had not wasted any time cashing the deposit check I'd sent him but in the wine world it's all about putting a romantic spin on things. At least first time around.

We ended up having a good visit, taking some time to taste the Mourvedre grapes (not ready) and talking about general wine stuff. It seems he would like less Zinfandel and more Grenache planted in his vineyard (he has some zinfandel still for sale), confirming the trend I'd seen in Paso Robles on a visit there some weeks earlier.

After an unremarkable "gourmet" Tuscan dinner in Jackson and a nice night at a local B & B it was off to Solano County to catch up on the Syrah vineyard and talk to Sal.

The Syrah vineyard is owned by a man named Steve Wirth who I had never met before; it was unclear how involved he was in the actual vineyard. I had always dealt with Roger King, the head of the Suisun Valley Wine Grape Growers Association. Roger had listed the grapes for sale and shown me around the area, drawn up the contract and generally acted like the man in charge.

I called Roger and arranged to meet him at GV Cellars, where we would all (hopefully including Sal) go over to the Wirth Vineyard (across the street from the winery) and look at grapes.

We rolled into GV Cellars, which was bustling with activity. Their annual harvest festival was set to kick off the next day so there were people milling around everywhere setting up party-related items and equipment.

The winery proper is in the back section of the main building, so we walked around to the back, accompanied by one of the friendly vineyard dogs. Just like last time the winery appeared to be in state of chaos. Someone was worker on what appeared to be a small crusher right at the entrance, fitting a new chain. The inside was packed with barrels and fermenters; immediately outside forklifts and various people were running around, some seemingly at random.

My initial impression of GV Cellars is that it resembled a winery I might run, if I ran a large winery that did a lot of outside work. I'm not sure this is a great thing - most winery operations are very clean and well organized places, with people doing their work slowly and pourposefully. GV is not too organized or clean from outward appearances, and has a lot of people rushing around, without much purpose. It honestly is a fun place though, due partly to the seemingly random nature of things.

We gave Sal a sample of the Grenache from Charlie's vineyard, which he took into the "lab" (a tiny room in the winery with a PH meter, a sink and some cupboards filled with, I guess, pipettes, vials and other testing paraphernalia. or maybe cookies and crackers). He came back and pronounced the brix 25.6 with a PH of 3.8.

Brix is the percentage of solids in the juice, essentially sugar content. PH is the degree of acidity in any solution (NOT the amount of acid, which in wine is mostly tartaric acid), with 7 representing a neutral reading. A solution below 7 is acid and above 7 is alkaline. A finished wine will come in with a PH of between 3 and 4 generally. A PH under 3.4 or so will taste notably acidic and a PH over 4 might be a little flabby. Wines with a high PH generally are not good agers, as the acid will provide the structure and the mild preservative effect to ensure longevity. There are many high alcohol, high fruit wines, especially from hot weather areas in California, that come in with PH values around 4or even higher - many of these taste pretty good, but what they have in common most of all is a blinking sign that says "drink me now - this is as good as it's going to get".

Since my Grenache allocation was going to be miniscule I didn't worry too much about the chemistry numbers, although I would perhaps prefer a tick or two lower on the PH side. The general equation for brix is slightly less than .6 degrees of alcohol per unit of brix so 25.6 brix ends up as roughly between 14.5% and 15% alcohol in a wine fermented totally dry, a value that was considered outlandish 30 years ago but is now well within normal for a California red.

After the brix/ph report Sal took me over to my barrels. My barrels! My guys! I had purchased 20 of the older barrels from Signorello sight unseen; Sal pointed out that they had snuck in an American oak barrel even though I'd been promised all French. Oh well. I'm overstocked anyway. A friend had asked me about getting a barrel as a garden decoration earlier that week and now I had just the thing for him.

The Sylvain barrels from Larkmead looked nice. I told Sal about my idea for a reserve syrah, barrel fermented, aged on its lees and to cap it, aged on its lees in the nice Sylvains. He liked the idea of creating a separate lot of wine just to see what it would be like. The lees aging idea is not that common for reds (or even whites in California) but you find it here and there. J Wilkes, a boutique pinot noir producer in SB County ages his reds on their lees and they're very nice. What this has to do with my syrah remains to be seen but I have enough of it to try some experiments.

Sal didn't have time to visit the syrah vineyard so Jason and I followed Roger over there. It looked the same as it had last time with the notable exception of purple grape clusters hanging off the vines. Ahhhhh, much nicer. As we were tasting our first grapes (noticeably unripe), I heard a howling in the distance, steadily getting louder. Coming up the small dir access road that runs through the vineyard a man wheeled a World War II vintage jeep around a bend towards us, accompanied by a large dog apparently trying to bite the right front tire of the moving vehicle. This was the source of the howling, as Fido was really making a racket while jousting with jeep. The jeep pulled up and there was Steve Wirth - he really existed.

Steve Wirth is a very tall, lean man. He looks like a farmer, although I don't know if he does that full time. I'm not sure he even makes a profit on the syrah. He also grows zinfandel at his vineyard, which does go to a commercial operation and it's a good sized vineyard - I could have gotten at least 12 tons of syrah if I had wanted to.

The Wirth Syrah vineyard has never produced commercial wine. This will be the fourth vintage of grapes from it, and it seems to me it's something of a make or break period for this venture, as I'm willing to put enough resources into the venture to produce it commercially. If my wine is less than good it's unclear who else will want to take a leap of faith.

Roger had told me the history of the venture: A winemaker from Sonoma had agreed to take the full production of syrah for 5 or 10 years; said winemaker had specified the vine spacing, clones, trellising, etc. In other words, everything. However when it was time to take the grapes he simply walked away and refused to buy any of it, let alone the full production. According to Roger he not only reneged on the agreement but refused to return phone calls or answer email. He wouldn't even tell Roger and Steve what clone is planted there. When Roger tells this story (I've heard it 3 times so far at least) the word asshole frequently punctuates his recap of the events.

A sad story it is indeed. Of course I don't know the other side of it. I don't rule out the possibility that the grapes are sub par and in fact I'm worried that they may not ripen fully. The vineyard is in a cool weather area, which is where you want to be in California but maybe it's too cool. After two weeks of record heat in Northern California the syrah grapes were noticeably unripe, and if they don't ripen fully this season they may not ripen in any year. Certainly I won't be around in the future to find out.

This sort of negativity is premature and I'm optimistic. In fact if the grapes ripen just enough I may have a complex and elegant syrah on my hands. As I keep reiterating, this year is a pilot project. Or did I say crapshoot?

Steve Wirth turned out to be a very solid, farmer type guy. For all I know he has twenty other vineyards, or maybe he supports himself as a software consultant and likes having a vineyard. He acts like a farmer, at one point complaining about the high cost of running the vineyard, as any good farmer would do. Or someone in the wine business.

We stood around talking and tasting unripe syrah grapes for a few more minutes. We took a couple of bunches back for Sal to have a look at and run some numbers on our return to GV Cellars. The numbers confirmed what I knew: brix was around 21, so at least 3 or 4 ticks to go. Roger is optimistic that they will ripen nicely in 2 to 3 weeks. Like I said, I'm with him.

Following my return to Los Angeles Charlie had a surprise for me: he was postponing the Grenache harvest until 2 local winemakers checked out the grapes and made the decision when to harvest. This was yet another example of my novice status in the wine industry and I'm starting to get very tired of it. First this guy had advertised 2 tons, then he decided I was getting 1 ton, then (without telling me until I came up there ) that was reduced to ½ ton. And now he was jerking me around on the harvest date we'd agreed on.

I had already arranged for Sal to go pick up the Grenache. It's 2 hours from Solano County to Amador, and of course Sal is working 12 hours a day during the crush period, so now I was going to look like I was jerking him around. I did not want to do this.

I had to tell Sal that the grapes might not be picked that Friday; here's my email:

Yo Sal

The grower is not picking on Friday, looks like late next week. Sorry for the confusion, he's jerking me around big time. I'll update you ASAP when he commits to a firm date.

MS

Here's his response:

I thought the quality from the samples you brought was already degrading.  Grenache has a tendency to become very unbalanced in late pickings, I'd rethink these grapes Mike, weather is supposed to be in the low 90's by Monday up there.  I'd hate to see you spend all this money for 90 gallons of Grenache you're not happy with.  Let me know what you think.

And here's my response to his response:

I agree w/ you completely but the problem is the guy sells a lot more of it
to winemakers in Amador who are focused on fruit bombs (it all tastes like
zin no matter what the varietal). So these winemakers have decided on an
extra week.

Yes, I was getting frustrated enough to start ragging on everybody, not just Charlie. These damn Amador County growers. It's all part of the massive zinification conspiracy.

I forwarded Sal's email to Charlie and voila! Charlie was picking Rousanne on Friday, so he could have his crew pick the Grenache afterwards. Of course, since I was a more or less unimportant customer (ah, that frustration ...), the Grenache would be picked last, meaning in the hot sun, and it would ride back another 90 minutes in the hot sun.

When you pick grapes you want to do it as early as possible. The simple fact is that the grapes taste better cold, in addition to the negative effects of sitting in the sun (or even shade) as the temperature rises. Sal had bins with lids, so that would help, but I was still worried. Doing it all by remote control wasn't helping my mood either.

After going back and forth with Charlie a bit (at one point in a phone conversation I told him we might as well throw the grapes in a toilet rather than transporting them back in the sun) he promised to have them picked by 11:00 am and keep them in the shade.

So we were on. It turns out Sal didn't get there until 12:00 anyway.

Sal and I had agreed to do a cold soak on the Grenache, so if he could them back to Green Valley intact the thinking is they would be more or less okay. One of the overriding factors in the whole scheme is that there's so little of it that the last little iota of quality and nuance is moot - it's going into a blend and it will be the decided minority in whatever blend it ends up in.

Charlie called late Friday and complimented me on Sal's professionalism. He assured me the grapes were beautiful and all was well. What else would he say?

I received an email from Sal today (Thursday). After the cold soak he inoculated the grapes with yeast on Monday and they're currently fermenting. He says they smell "very bubble gummy". I don't think this is a good thing at this point, but at least they don't smell like rotten fish or fertilizer. Bubble gum is not really a flavor component I had in mind though.

One of the problems Sal had relayed to me was that the fermentations at GV were going very fast. He said in the email he would press it off Saturday, which means a 6 day fermentation. When I was up there he remarked that a large lot of Sauvignon Blanc has also fermented in 5 to 7 days. Generally you want to ferment your wine around 14 days. The slower the better (to a point). This seems to be directly connected to GV's equipment. Normally fermenting tanks have cooling sleeves in order to slow down and extend fermentation. GV has some big tanks, but for the smaller stuff I think they just leave it in the winery and let it go.

So I'm glad this small lot of Grenache is just about ready for barrel - I'm learning what's going on up there. I'll be going up for the syrah harvest and I need to address a couple of things with Sal, most notably the fermentation times. I have to insist we try to get to 14 days, or at least a few more than 6. Whether I have enough influence to get them to do this, and whether their facilities will even support it is another issue entirely.

The other factor I'm worried about is the cold soak. I would like to cold soak the entire lot of syrah, 3 days or so for most of it and 6 or 7 days for our potential reserve. I'm not sure this place, cramped and chaotic as it is, has the ability to let 6 tons of grapes sit around in a cold soak.

A cold soak is a common method of extracting additional flavors, tannins and (primarily) color from grapes. Additional chemical reactions occur that extract more phenols from the juice and skins over the period of cold soaking. Phenols are the flavor components of grapes and wine.

There is no downside to it if you have the proper facilities and the proper attention. There is tremendous downside if either of those two factors don't exist - if the temperature is not kept cold and if the grapes are not hit with SO2 once or twice you can get premature fermentation with native yeasts, bacterial infection, etc. Bad stuff. So again I'm worried - I may have to settle for just cold soaking the "reserve" (only about 1½ tons) and plunging forward with the rest.

The silver lining in all of it is that the mourvedre will come in so late we can probably do whatever we want in terms of soaking and fermentation because that will almost certainly be the last lot of grapes into GV - Charlie told me it never ripens before late October.

Time to check in with Roger on syrah ripeness. I hope he doesn't tell me it's tasting like bubblegum.

A lot of people have asked how I plan to sell my wine. I have no good answer for that at the moment. I'm thinking direct pitches to sommeliers in Los Angeles, I'm thinking a series of private tastings (my hairstylist,er barber, runs a chic salon. She's offered to set up some wine parties. Don't laugh. Yet.) I'm thinking grass roots internet, lots of blogging. I'm thinking.

Or maybe I could submit it to a wine publication and get a super duper score and be sold out for the next 5 years up front.

Wine scores have taken over wine marketing and fine wine sales among a huge swath of the "informed" wine buying public in the U.S. This fact is regularly bemoaned by the industry but the hard fact is that most every winery and winemaker would give (insert body part here) for a high score from one of the tastemakers. I will soon fall into that category, and I'm saying take any body part as long as I have a spare.

When it comes to reviewing and rating wine for the American market there are two publications that tower above all others in influence: The Wine Spectator and the Wine Advocate. The Wine Spectator is a large format glossy magazine that features, along with an extensive list of capsule wine reviews (each accompanied by a score), all sorts of articles about wine and food and to a lesser extent traveling to places that have wine and food.

The Wine Advocate is a newsletter, and almost no one refers to it as "The Wine Advocate" when discussing it. They refer to it as Robert Parker.

Robert Parker is one of the most polarizing figures in the wine world. An ex-attorney based in Baltimore, reportedly with his nose or palate or something insured for $1,000,000, he spends his time traveling to various wine regions and wineries, tasting wines and reviewing them. He then writes them up and assigns them a score on a 100 point scale. He apparently achieved some renown by touting the 1982 vintage of Bordeaux as superb, an opinion that was at odds with the conventional wisdom that greeted the release of the vintage. He was later proved correct and his star was in the ascendant. Besides reviews he has published several books on wines (including annual recaps of reviews that date back several years).

It's important to note that by now The Wine Advocate has several writers and tasters besides Parker, but it will always be Parker who is synonymous with the publication and its reviews..

The 100 point scale has fomented severe consternation over the years. Briefly, a wine that scores from 95 to 100 points is considered outstanding, at the very top of its class. 90 to 94 is excellent. 85 to 89 very good, 80 to 85 good. Below 80 is not recommended for much more than cooking, so really it's a 20 point scale. The Wine Spectator uses the same scoring system.

Very few wines get scored below 80 and very few get a "perfect" 100. A brief glance show around 130 perfect Robert Parker scores as of June 2008, the vast majority from France and California (there are also some Aussies, Germans, ports and Italians and even the odd Tokay, a rich and legendary Hungarian dessert wine)

The simple fact is that a review from Parker can make or break a winery, the general demark being 90 points (although if a wine is low priced 85 may get it over the hump). Wineries decry the monolithic and quantitative 100 point scale but if their wine scores over 90 you can be sure they will feature that score in all of their marketing and communications. You can also be sure that the price will go up quickly.

The wine scoring process has become so ingrained in the culture of wine retailing, marketing and collecting that sadly, many wines that do not score over 90 points become market laggards, for no good reason. I have been in many wine shops; in most of them the high scoring wines are displayed prominently, and many customers tend to seek them out (I have been told by friends in the wine business that some customers will not even consider a higher end wine that scores less than 90 points). Naturally the high scorers sell out quickly, and if you can find a wine that scored over 95 points you will see a marked up price. Of course you can get one at auction. As I was perusing Parker's 100 point wines I took a glance at the Sine Qua Non 2003 Syrah. It's still available, at a number of online auctions, at a median price of around $800. This wine was probably priced at $40 or $50 on release although once the score came in the release price went up quickly.

Parker is regularly reviled for mainly 2 reasons:

1)     It is unhealthy for one person to have so much power over tastes, trends and pricing.

And

2)     He has an affinity for a very specific type of wine, i.e. big blockbuster reds bursting with fruit and tannins and lacking, perhaps, a subtle or food-friendly touch.

From my own wine tasting experiences I know that after a while a certain amount of palate fatigue sets in, and it takes more and more oomph to cut through that fatigue. Thus a wine that early on may have been just plain over the top with overripe fruit and high alcohol just really hits the spot later in the game. It's important to note that wine tastings do not involve food, and the tasters usually spit out the wines. Thus the wine tasting and reviewing scenario does not resemble a typical scenario for fine wine i.e. having a bottle with a meal. I recall a quote from a well known winemaker (I forget who) along the lines of "I make my wine to drink with food, not Lafitte".

I've learned this lesson many times. Recently I was at a wine bar in Solvang, and doing an extensive tasting (as is frequently my wont) of mostly pinot noirs. Since I don't spit, I was not only experiencing palate fatigue but also a degree of lapsed judgment. The counter guy brought out a zinfandel from Paso Robles, a huge fruit bomb with over 16% alcohol, to contrast with all those elegant pinots. It tasted great; all that fruit and alcohol cut right through. I bought a bottle but when I subsequently served it at a nice dinner it didn't mate with the food so much as squash it.

The main objection to Parker is not so much his palate but his power. In fairness to the man, his influence frequently seems to be a source of embarrassment to him. After all, he's really a guy who loved wine and wanted to write about it. World domination was not on his agenda. Corollary to the criticism is the charge that winemakers have altered their style to get high scores. Honestly I can't vouch for this is one way or another, but I can say that there are an awful lot of wines out there and it can't be that difficult to find one in a style you like. They're not all big ass reds.

The Wine Spectator (WS) is the co-conspirator as far as the wine score tyranny goes. WS started as an industry newsletter; in the 1990's it evolved into a large glossy magazine and is now the undisputed heavyweight when it comes to North American wine magazines.

I used to read WS regularly, and pored over their wine ratings, which make up several pages in the back of every issue. I became burnt out by the magazine's style and disillusioned with the whole rating system.

WS is so in thrall to their wine scores that any reference to a wine in an article will always be accompanied by its score. For example an article about travel in Rome may have a line that says "we stopped in a charming café and had a delightful 1991 BlaBla Brunello (89 points)" This becomes very off putting and they do it relentlessly. The scores are paramount and no wine is discussed without its score in parentheses. Vintages in different regions also get scores. It's all quantitative all the time.

Like any subjective system, the WS scores are imperfect to the point of occasionally being badly flawed. One of my favorite wines of the past few years was a 2001 Kali Hart pinot noir, a low priced wine made by Robert Talbot, a well known chardonnay and pinot noir specialist in Monterey County. I bought one on a whim in Monterey and it was so good I ordered a case from the winery, which was discounting it to something like $10 or $11 a bottle by the case, what I saw as an unbeatable value. Every single bottle was outstanding and by the end of the case I was trotting out the Kali Hart for fancy meals that would normally have called for a more prestigious wine.

Why was this delicious wine, from a respected producer, so low priced? I learned later that WS had scored it 78 points, essentially delivering a death blow to the wine in terms of market acceptance - a score below 80 points might as well be zero.

When I was an avid reader of WS I did purchase wines based on scores, but this practice lasted a short time. The wines were disappointing more often than they should have been, they were hard to find and naturally no one does you any favors on the price.

Now, most wines scored highly by WS and Parker are without a doubt good wines, and most wines scored low are not. This is an immutable fact of wine reviews in general. Wine reviewers are generally conscientious and feel that what they are doing is an important part of the wine world (there are a few publications that seem to have a different agenda and give suspiciously high scores). And you are not going to be able to taste most wines, especially pricy and/or rare ones, so if you're curious about a certain wine or genre reviews and scores may need to be your starting and/or ending point. But the lesson I have learned over and over again is that acquiring wine based on reviews (numerical or otherwise) is both limiting and not much fun, and to my friends who shop solely on the basis of scores I say go out and taste before you buy.

The wine magazine I read regularly is Decanter, the leading wine mag in Britain, modestly described on its cover as "The World's Best Wine Magazine". I like reading British magazines in general, as the level of erudition is usually higher than their American counterparts and I also get a point of view from a different part of the world.

Truth be told, Decanter is a fairly stodgy publication, and they cater to a certain kind of British clientele, the kind that presumably buys "claret" and owns a cellar which ages fine wines for many years before drinking. The Brits are obsessed with drinking older wines, something that bemuses the French, who make most of these wines that are laid down to age. Decanter is also a rabid Robert Parker hater, and their various writers and columnists will take various potshots at him from time to time. I find this great fun and I believe much of it stems from envy - the fat cats of British wine journalism want to call the shots and set the tastes rather than the American upstart. Jancis Robinson, a frequent contributor and probably the leading female wine writer in the world, has a long running feud with Parker. Oddly enough, this feud apparently originated over a single bottle of wine: the 2003 Chateau Pavie. Robinson gave it 12 out of 20 points and called it "portly-sweet late harvest Zinfandel". Parker gave it 100 points. They've been at odds ever since, as various critics lined up behind one or the other (usually based on which side of the Atlantic they were on) and the whole thing turned into an argument over whose philosophy of wine was "right".

Hugh Johnson, another well known wine writer who contributes to Decanter had this to say about Parker in his memoir: "Imperial hegemony lives in WashingtonBaltimore... Taste in the past was largely a matter of harmless fashion. In American hands, it feels more like a moral crusade. Robert Parker deals in absolutes, and castigates those he sees as backsliders." and the dictator of taste in

Decanter is of course rabidly against the "American" 100 point scoring system. When they rate their wines it's on the 5 star scale, with ones and fives being very rare. Ah but Jancis Robinson gave the Chateau Pavie 12 out of 20. What's going on?

In Britain a 20 point system is used. Additionally many reviewers will assign ½ points so it can even be a 40 point system. Like the 100 point system the bottom section of the scale is meaningless (once you get below about 14 points the wine effectively has a stop sign affixed to it). While Decanter only assigns stars, these are converted from the reviewer rankings on the 20 point scale. Many British publications don't do the stars but actually just assign the point totals, kind of like the ... 100 point system! So the tyranny of the quantitative may extend to our friends in Britain as well.

It's now getting towards fall and that means crush time. The real action (part 1) is about to begin.

I procured barrels from 3 different sources, all through Wine Business Monthly. Since I'm getting between 8 and 9 tons worth of grapes; that translates to roughly 630 cases, using a very optimistic figure of 70 cases per ton. This is on the high side, 65 or so per ton is more realistic. Still, you don't want to be short of barrels, so I have 31. There are 25 cases per barrel so I have over 750 cases worth of capacity - as usual I over shopped.

I purchased 8 barrels from Meza barrel Company in Santa Maria. Since I was in Santa Maria frequently (Allan Hancock College is in Santa Maria) it was easy enough to go take a look at what they had. The ones I was interested in were $90 each and the manager was uncertain whether they had been used once or twice. I took this to mean they had been used twice. Normally barrels have 3 to 4 uses in them before they stop imparting oak flavors to the wine and become "neutral". Neutral oak is still useful, as wine aged in oak will be different than wine aged in, say, stainless steel, mostly due to micro-oxygenation.

There is a funny sequence in Mondovino, a highly biased film that laments the homogenization of the wine industry. Although Mondovino makes some good points the film goes out of its way to make buffoons out of wine industry figures it disapproves of. One of those is Michel Rolland, a Pomerol based "flying winemaker" who is in great demand the world over. Rolland has attracted tremendous criticism from many sectors for creating wines all over the world that taste similar (I can't vouch for this yea or nay since I can't afford his clients' products). His other accomplishment is usually to increase sales of the clients' wines, sometimes very dramatically. In the film he is shown running in to 2 or 3 wineries, screaming "microoxygenate!" and then running back out to his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, presumably off to the next winery to repeat the process.

Meza Barrel Company is outside Santa Maria, about 10 miles past the airport. The barrels are housed in an enormous hangar, stacked 30 high - there must have been over 5000 barrels there, most for sale but some ready to be broken up for wood. The wine world is up to its ears in used barrels and most any winery will let you have all the old barrels you want if you haul them away.

I was more interested in the somewhat newer barrels, so we strolled through the dark unlit building. It's a great setting for a horror movie, perhaps a deranged killer living amongst the barrels in the dark corner of the warehouse, picking off unsuspecting winemakers looking for a few good barrels.

Armed with the tiny flashlight I keep in my car I inspected the inventory. The ones I was interested in were near the front thankfully, so there was a bit of daylight helping me out. The truth of the matter is that I knew I wanted French oak but beyond that I have no idea how the various barrels would affect my wine. Some looked less used than others but I felt this might be misleading, although of course I didn't want any falling apart at the seams.

As with all things in winemaking there is much ongoing debate about barrels and cooperage. French oak commands the highest price and is considered the best product. At this writing a new French oak barrel will cost $1100 in the U.S. An American oak barrel is considerably less, and they are widely used for certain wines (e.g. zinfandel) and not at all for certain others (e.g. pinot noir). Eastern European oak is also gaining a following, most notably Hungarian but also Russian, Rumanian, Slovenian, etc.

The French have by far the most comprehensive oak program. There are several forests, replanting has been regularly undertaken since the 19^th century and the oak is usually aged from 2 to 3 years before being sold to cooperages. There are many cooperages. Some common wisdom says that the cooper has a greater influence on the taste of the wine than the forest used for the wood, others say it's a subtle nuance at most. The barrels are toasted (charred on the inside) after construction: there is light, medium and heavy toast. There is also medium+ toast, which I guess is between medium and heavy. The great majority of barrels used for red wines are medium and medium+ toast - I have never seen a barrel marked "heavy" toast.

In the winemaking class Norm brought in barrel samples of the same pinot noir that was aging in 3 different brands of new French oak. It was quite a revelation, as the wine from each barrel tasted noticeably different. Norm explained what he looked for in each barrel e.g. tannic structure, oak flavor, more gradual aging, etc. I had a similar experience when Norm brought in a guest speaker who was a rep for several French coopers on the West Coast - sure enough the same trial was repeated, also with pinot noir, and the whole class noticed distinct differences across the different barrels.

So what does it all mean? It means experience counts and it means I'm winging it. Since all of my barrels are at least 11/2 years old (in terms of use) it's a double edged sword. The oak flavors I'm going to get will be muted at best but it's possible I will gain little in experience as to how a certain barrel tastes.

At Meza I selected 8 barrels - 4 Saury, 2 Quintessa and 2 Roberts and Sons. I took the Saury since Saury is widely used and I've seen it everywhere - how much damage can it do? I took the Roberts and Sons because it was from Nevers, one of the smaller French forests. I've never heard of Roberts and Sons but I liked the exotic aspect of using Nevers oak. And I'm sure I took the Quintessas for some good reason but I can't remember why.

After shaking hands on the deal I looked up Nevers, seeing that it was a robust flavored wood generally used for heavy reds. Hmm, heavy red is not the style I'm going for but on the other hand, maybe that means they'll have more left after 2 vintages. Or maybe it means nothing. Or something completely different - for all I know the "heavy reds" presumably aged in these barrels soak up all the oak early on.

Roger quoted me $200 for shipping to Solano County. I have an old Nissan pickup truck but that will only fit 2 barrels. After exploring alternatives I had to pony up the shipping costs - the barrels are now in Solano County and my "miscellaneous expense" line item has taken another hit.

I returned to Wine Business Monthly for more barrels; I figured I needed 20 more and sure enough Signorello, an upscale winery in Napa had plenty of 3 and 4 year old French oak barrels. The 3 year olds were $30 and the 4 year olds were $25, so I sprung for the 3 year olds. I called Pierre, the winemaker at Signorello and asked him what make the barrels were. Now, I've been stressing that the various brands don't mean much to me in the context of my wine, nor would it matter that much for 3 year old barrel but you never know, I might learn something. Pierre chuckled and replied "what does it matter with 3 year old barrels?"

Fair enough, but it never hurts to ask. These are my neutral oak barrels.

I had also been in contact with Larkmead, an even more upscale winery in Napa. At this point I had 28 barrels, but not a lot of oak flavor. Larkmead had a whole assortment of nice barrels, used "1½ times". What this means is that Larkmead ages their red wines for 18 to 22 months, roughly double what you would expect, thus they were used once, but for a long time. I ordered 2 Sylvains and 1 Damptos. I had read somewhere that Sylvain was a sort of highly regarded secret weapon among French oak cooperage. I got the Damptos because Roger at Meza had sold a lot of Damptos the right before I got there and they just looked so nice, so what the hell.

I did more research on Sylvain and luckily they were widely considered superior for syrah in particular and reds in general. Larkmead later informed me the Damptos was gone, so I got an additional Sylvain. The 3 Sylvains are my "new" barrels, as silly as that sounds. It's all relative when you're doing it on a shoestring.

I had Sal arrange to pick up the 2 additional lots, so everything is now at the Solano County facility. When you have barrels you need racks, which the barrels rest on, allowing them to be stacked and transported via forklift. Sal charged me $175 to pick up the barrels and $300 for 15 double racks. What was that about miscellaneous expenses?

My preliminary plans for the barrels are:

For the Grenache:

I'm getting between 1 and 2 tons, which means between 2 and 4 barrels

1 Sylvain, 1 Roberts and Son, 1 Saury and the rest neutral

For the Mourvedre:

1 Saury, 2 neutrals

For the Syrah:

Everything else.

How have I come up with these formulas? It's a combination of about 20% common sense and 80% winging it. The Grenache was originally meant to be my flagship, so it needs some oak. I don't want an oaky Mourvedre, as it's probably going to be a blender.

The syrah is where I can play around. I'm getting six tons, which by itself is almost 400 cases. I want to do 2 barrel fermentations, just to see. Barrel fermenting syrah is fairly unusual but not unheard of, and I've had barrel fermented pinot noirs that are terrific, so I can try an experiment. I may leave one of the barrels on its lees (the dead yeast cells) until bottling and rack the other just to see the difference there as well. I'm not sure if you're supposed to barrel ferment a red in new or old oak so I need to research that issue. I'm sure I'll find a variety of opinions on the subject.

The lees thing is usually used for a certain style of white wine (it's widely used in Alsace, where mostly whites are made) but I've seen it used for reds. There is a mad scientist winery in California called Scholium Project that does all kinds of things with lees - leaving the wines on the lees for a year, even aging them on lees from another red, etc. It's premature for me to try that, and it's not my winery so we'll be going more straightforward.

My original plan was to have the Grenache be my flagship wine. I think there is only one winery doing a 100% Grenache from the vineyard in Amador County. I ordered a bottle of their wine after I had made the deal for the grapes. It tasted fairly good, but in a very over the top style. The alcohol was over 15% and you could really feel the alcoholic heat. It did not in any remind me of an elegant southern Rhone wine. It reminded me of a big zinfandel you'd slug down at a barbecue.

So the strategy's changed. I'm now thinking a GSM blend - the classic Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre blend found in the Cotes du Rhone. The syrah vineyard from Solano County is technically in a cool climate so if it reins in the fruit bomb Grenache I could have something. My initial thinking is maybe a 50%-40%-10% blend, but it's all in the tasting (more than one industry person has assured me blending trials are the most fun part of the winemaking process)

There of course will be a syrah, maybe 2. If the barrel fermenting thing works out there might even been a reserve variant, for a few extra bucks. Will I blend in some of the other 2? Uhmmmm.

And then there's the mourvedre. Mourvedre in California is inconsistent as a primary grape and it's usually a blender in France as well. It makes a nice rose but since roses sell for less than reds, that's not interesting to me. I'm hoping it can stand on its own, as there aren't that many California mourvedres but it's all in the tasting. Repeat ad infinitum.

The depreciation of barrel stock is unbelievable: you go from $1100 to $125 to $30 to pretty much nothing in the span of 4 years.