Spent most of yesterday standing on my feet in San Francisco pouring wine for folks at PinotDays.  It is really a fantastic event with a great group of wineries and attendees.  It would be fun just to attend sometime as we are usually too busy to get around to other tables and taste….Of course, I can’t really complain about not tasting, or about my feet, as Dianna poured at 3 different events in San Francisco during the week so she made the trip from Santa Rosa to the City and back 6 different times.

But now it is back to the real world for us.  Our goal over the next couple of weeks is to check out all of our vineyards and see how things set.  We were down south last week and today Dianna is hitting Sapphire Hill and Lewis.  I know that Hirsch will be on Friday morning….and the other Russian River, Sonoma Coast, and Sonoma Mountain Vineyards will be mixed around.  And July 6th is an up and back on the same day trip to the Willamette Valley.  And, finally, Dianna will be hitting the Page-Nord Vineyard over in Napa at the end of next week.

In addition, we hope to finish up a new newsletter this week, and Dianna is going to be working in Napa and Sonoma/Marin selling wine on two different days while I am going to be riding with our sales rep in the rest of Sonoma County tomorrow. 

So, fun times ahead….all of which require less time on my feet!

Dianna and I are committed to seeing all of our vineyards between now (or a few days ago) and when we go back to Texas (for both fun and business) on July 10th.  I was down south last week….hitting Cargasacchi, Clos Pepe, Stolpman (for Nebbiolo), Pisoni, Sierra Mar (a new SLH property owned by Gary Franscioni), Garys’ and Pisoni.  Things looked good….with Clos Pepe having an unusually large crop and Cargasacchi and Rosella’s looking a little lower than normal at this early stage.

We’ve also hit a number of the vineyards up in Sonoma County.  What exactly do we tell the growers when we are out there?  We certainly talk with them, but prefer to follow up with an email just to make sure what we are saying is clear.  Here’s a recent email that I sent to give you an idea of what we are looking for now:

On the Pinot

1) We need to move wires.

2) Need to do some leafing on the morning side.

3) Need to remove some crop on shorter shoots.

Overall, there is more crop, a better set, that at some of our vineyards. There is definitely going to be some clumping here and there and that will also need to be cleaned up but do not think it is major. Then, finally, we will need to thin a bit at color just to even it up.

On the Syrah

1) Maybe move wires again?

2) Some leaf pulling on the morning side.

3) Some of the vines have very short, very puny looking shoots. Some of them will require crop dropped entirely, others just down to 1 cluster per shoot. Any idea, Jim, why the vines look like that? What does Syrah Decline look like?