If your life is anything like ours, 2009 is proving to be another crazy year — uncertain, fast moving, opportunistic…exciting. But let’s cut to the chase. We know we’ve been negligent in communicating the past few months (ok, a year or two as far as the blog is concerned) and we have some ’splaining to do…

Thanks to your support, what started out as a pipe dream and a handful of barrels has quickly become a full fledged winery. After working out of Zenaida Cellars in Paso Robles for the past four years, our small world surfaced an ideal space in the East Bay (just outside of San Francisco)… a perfect location for our very own urban winery. Not to mention, it puts us closer to our growing set of Sonoma, Napa, and Oregon vineyards, and is still within easy reach of our Central Coast vineyards. So while we finished up an amazing 2008 harvest in Paso Robles, we jumped at the opportunity in Oakland. That’s right, the Oaktown. As in 3-5-7. Trust us, we know how it sounds. But we’re joining 17 other wineries in the East Bay, including Rosenblum, JC Cellars, and Dashe Cellars. Who woulda thought?

Of course we thought moving a winery would be pretty easy. Right. Ever since we pulled the trigger, we’ve been moving barrels, equipment, bins, cased goods, and settling into the new space. And begging the government to move a little faster. Well its true, squeaky wheels eventually get the grease — we’re in, approved, legit (we think). I don’t know how Melinda pulled it off, but she did.

The new space is, well, great. Our new cellar gives us plenty of room to breathe - some 5000 square feet in the winery as well as a tasting room where we plan to hold limited public tastings on the first Saturday of each month (beginning April 4th) and by appointment (just call anytime).

If you’re interested in a nickel tour, drop us a line. As for the blog? Well, expect some new voices and a lot more communication. I’ll chime in whenever they let me.

I’m a few days behind here, but this Saturday past marks the next round of madness in the cellar. It was actually a pretty easy start, with a few tons of Viognier from Harry Fralich and a few tons of Petite Sirah from the Russell home ranch. Both harvests were down about 25% from our initial expectations, but WOW!!!! The fruit is just killer.

Harry’s Viognier is as good as it gets out of Paso Robles. Viognier off this vineyard has an amazing combination of yellow and green citrus combined with sweet mandarin orange overtones. Fantastic. The fruit came in at a nice 25.1 Brix and 3.57pH. We popped it directly in the press for a quick squeeze and cold settle and it’s in barrel fermenting as we speak (only six different yeasts this time).

The Petite Sirah looks absolutely ridiculous… tiny, tiny berries and loose little clusters. Exactly what we like. The stuff came off the destemmer almost black, and already stains everything it touches. This is going to be a good year.

Stay tuned for the next round…

Bottling can be a maddening process. I really don’t know why we decided to pull one more bottling run off before harvest (which of course is only a few days away)… but we did. It actually went off without a hitch - all our bottles and cork showed up ahead of time, and the mobile bottling truck (a site to behold in action) was flawless. As a result, we now have all the ‘05 reds bottled and resting and they’re tasting great. We bottled our ‘05 Grenache (co-fermented with a wee-bit of Mourvedre), our ‘05 Syrah (co-fermented with a wee-bit of Viognier), and our ‘05 “The Breadwinner” blend (more on this one later).

Yeah, yeah… I know. More wine “to come.” Trust me, it’s coming.

But we’re finally starting to get a bit of relief. In some spots, the rising Mercury has been helpful (our Santa Maria Grenache)… in others, it’s had us (and especialy the growers) working overtime. Needless to say, we have a few sites that ramped up the sugar over the past week. But nothing too crazy, and nothing we didn’t really expect when we saw the forecast. Either way, harvest is coming, and coming fast. Depending on how the fruit tastes and the numbers look, we’ll likely kick off 2007 with Fralich Viognier and follow it up with some Petite Sirah out of the Russell home vineyard this weekend. Yeeee-haw!

So I was at this internet conference the other day (staying close to my roots), and I was simply staggered with the number of wealth creation tools (i.e., working stiffs like you and me) that were taking the idea of stage left very seriously (oh, the irony). One gal stood up and proudly stated her rank and serial number for really big Company X. She then pointed a question at executive from really big Company Y, “while I work for ‘Company X’, I also run a group of my own sites geared at…” blah blah blah… “but I don’t get any help or attention. What are you doing for the little guy?”

What’s important in this scene isn’t the idea that “The Man” is keeping the little guy down. It’s more that this woman was taking the stage left bull by the horns. Maybe I’m overselling, but I tracked her down after the session and asked her why she was moonlighting and, more importantly, why she was doing basically the same thing in both her “jobs.”

So, here’s the fun part: she really loved what she tactically did for “Company X,” but doing it for someone else made it just a job. When she was running her own websites, the same tactics became her passion. The challenge of driving people to her site and profitably selling services just made her tick. I told her she needed to get out more. But I get it.

I had a few more conversations along the same lines over the course of the conference. And boy did I receive some colorful descriptions of stage lefts. The edited version: for some people, making wine is their passion (me, thank you very much), some have their kids or escape through travel. Others care about web site optimization, or blogging, or the entrepreneurial adrenaline rush.

What was great for me to see was how many people are truly passionate about something. And that they’re living it (and talking about it loud and proud). With the McStandardization of so much of our lives, it’s easy to just go with the flow. You might even dig the flow. But more and more people are stepping out of the flow, or creating their own – if even for the weekends.

At the end of the day, one doesn’t need to quit the day job or march against the tyranny of Company X, Y, Z, or The Man to have (or do) a stage left. A stage left is simple. It’s what lights your fire… what makes the 9-to-5 totally worthwhile. Even if it is the 9-to-5.

So, what’s your stage left?

What a wild year… if time flies when you’re having fun, we must be smack dab in the middle of the party that never ended. We’re one step closer to releasing wine (just waiting on the government approvals), three weeks away from another bottling run, and about four weeks away from a winery full of fermenting fruit.

We’re expanding the line-up a bit in 2007 (more to come on that later), but just a bit. Otherwise, Melinda will be using me for punchdowns.

This year, we’ll be posting harvest notes daily to give you a closer look at our favorite time of year. It’s chaotic. It’s intense. It’s painful. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’re running behind, I admit. Our 2005 Viognier and 2004 Grenache/Cab are hanging out in the bottle waiting for their new labels. We’ve been working with a great branding agency on the new labels, and we’re anxious to be able to show them to everyone. But designing the labels is only the first step. Then we get to run them to the federal government for approvals. We’re hoping to be able to bring the wines to you sometime in July. If not, we may need you to write a letter to your local senator. Stay tuned for more…

There are two types of people in this world (I know, I know… just work with me here): 1) people who work well in, and frankly desire, the high transparency model, and; 2) people who like the black box approach. Surprise, surprise, I prefer the high transparency model. I’m an information geek. Especially when it’s something I really dig. Like wine.

I don’t know how many people read Eric Asimov’s article in the New York Times on the use of oak alternatives and additive labeling, but it really got me thinking about the high transparency model as it relates to wine. Allergen labeling aside…

The article includes a quote that basically says that people in the wine industry are probably more concerned with the idea of process and material transparency than consumers. That’s probably right. I can only say that I have bored the pants off way too many people talking about wild yeasts, obscure French forests, and processes with wacky names like delestage. Sure, a few people dig it. I certainly dig talking about those things.

From the article, I suppose Asimov would dig seeing more about the voodoo employed at this winery on our bottles. I’m sure a lot of other people would as well. Others might fall asleep before we make it to describing the cold soak. Even though you won’t see every little detail on the back o’ the bottle, we’re open about what we do and how we do it. We won’t give up the “secret sauce” mind you, but if you want to talk bentonite (use it on the whites on occasion although I’m leaning toward going cloudy in my old age) or oak staves (tried ‘em - didn’t end up in the bottle), feel free to drop me a line.

So which kind of person are you?

Today is turning out to be one of those “you know you’ve gone overboard when…” kind of days. This year has turned out to be an incredibly slow MLF (malolactic fermentation) year. It’s now late May, and I still have a number of barrels chugging along. For reference, if I had to make a broad generalization, I’d say we’re normally through ML before April hits. But not this year.

Anyway, I’ve been playing road warrior lately and needed a bit of help in the cellar from one of our winemakin’ friends. I asked him to take samples from a few barrels for MLF testing… just 45 or so. Being a good friend, he called me to basically ask me if I really wanted to take samples out of each barrel, when a perfectly acceptable approach would be to separate the barrels into lots, take representative samples from each barrel, blend them together, and test the blended lots. Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s what most people do. A completely valid approach. It’s way easier, and a LOT cheaper. But he doesn’t do it with his wine, either.

In the end, I appreciate that he was trying to save me a pretty significant chunk of money. But we don’t blend anything until the very end. We rack every barrel separately. Every lot has it’s own topping wine. If you ask me, every barrel in the cellar has it’s own personality as a result. Sure, it’s way more work. And although Melinda might tell you otherwise, it’s not like I get a kick out of spending extra money for the sake of spending extra money. But that’s what’s funny about “extra work” - when it’s for something you love, it never quite strikes you that way.

2006 is behind us. So are 26,000 driving miles, 19.7 tons of fruit, 1,346 punch downs, 19 delestages, and a partridge in a pear tree. Actually, it was a woodpecker on a macrobin (really - picture coming soon). It didn’t take the old bird long to abandon the idea.

2006 is undoubtedly our best vintage to date, with crazy quality showing through even at this early date. Stay tuned for updates on how this latest batch of kiddies is growing up, and for the latest musings from the staff of Stage Left.