2004 Dunn Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

A few evenings ago, we celebrated our friend's un-birthday. My husband made a slow smoked cowboy steak. We received some fresh sugar snap peas from our neighbor that we prepared as a side dish and a baked potato completed the accompaniments to the cowboy steak.
It was a special birthday for our friend so my husband pulled out this 2004 Dunn Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.
I associate California Cabernet Sauvignon with too much alcohol and so I was quite surprised that this 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon was not overly unctious and went so perfectly with the cowboy steak.
I found the answer to why I liked this 2004 Dunn so much in a 2012 article from SFGate.¹ Dunn uses a method called reverse osmosis to remove some of the natural alcohol that is the result of fermentation. His aim is to keep his alcohol level below 14%. In reverse osmosis, wine is passed through a semipermeable membrane that filters out some water and alcohol, and when blended back together, the alcohol level can be dialed down without losing ripe flavors.
I really enjoyed this now 20 year old Dunn Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon! The wonderful thing is that my husband said he has many more bottles of Dunn!
References:
1. Jon Bonné, Randy Dunn's Cabernet crusade, SFGate, Aug 27, 2012.

Bluebird House to Fulfill Conservation Stewardship Program Requirements

A few days ago, my husband put a bluebird house just outside of the vineyard in fulfillment of one of the requirements for the Conservation Stewardship Program that we are participating in through the National Resources Conservation Services (NRCS). This is a 5 year program with goals for us to meet every year. In return, we get some money from the program. Last year, we put in a bathouse a little north of the vineyard and called it the Luxury Condo for bats. So far, we have no bats living in the luxury condo.
We don't really hold out much hope for getting bluebirds building a nest in this "house" but we can attest to the fact that we have a lot of nest building in the vineyard. Way back in 2016, we saw our first nest in the vineyard. The birds like to construct their little nest in the shoots that come from our graft union which is around 26 inches off the ground. This year is no exception. We have found 2 nests in the vineyard so far.

The birds that like to build their nests in our vineyard canopy include bluebirds, chipping sparrows and gold finches. We enjoy having our bird guests set up residence in our vineyard! I think it's much more inviting than the bluebird house, wouldn't you agree?

Aroma Therapy in the Vineyard

On Monday, we were in the vineyard working on shoot tucking and positioning the Auxerrois. It was a perfect day with very little humidity and the occasional breeze brought the aroma of the blooming honeysuckle. Granted, it is an invasive species but it was so pleasant to smell the honeysuckle while we were working. Shoot tucking and the smell of honeysuckle is an indelible association of work in the vineyard in early summer.

That was the last row of Auxerrois that we had to work on so while we were doing that, the Chenin Blanc was going out of control with shoots around the graft union. On Tuesday, we knew that we were in for the first day of the multi-day heat wave so we went to the vineyard on the early side for us. In the Chenin Blanc, we are clearing the shoots around the graft union and positioning the growing shoots.

Today was more of the same work in the Chenin Blanc. We've learned to work on only half of the vineyard so that the task doesn't appear to be endless. We do multiple half rows.
We went to check on our other varieties and found that the Chardonnay are now in fruitset and the Barbera as well as the Cabernet Franc are in the early stages of flowering. Here is a photo of the Chardonnay and the Barbera. The inflorescence of the Barbera appears very different from the other varieties we grow, having a very long peduncle!

The Auxerrois is not as advanced as the Chardonnay but it is in full bloom. The Chenin Blanc is just beginning to bloom and the Cabernet Sauvignon is just sitting there looking pretty!
Tomorrow is another day of aroma therapy in the vineyard!

2017 Domaine Leflaive Meursault

Recently, we had our friends over for dinner. My husband retrieved this 2018 Chenin Blanc Petillant Naturel or Pét-nat from our stash to serve with the first course which was fresh shucked oysters. My husband has perfected the art of shucking!
We made this wine in 2018 and call it Pa'akaihu which is Hawaiian for effervescent. Pét-nat wine is also known as Méthode Ancestrale. We made this wine by transferring partially fermented Chenin Blanc into heavier champagne style bottles and crown capped it to finish fermenting and trapping the carbon dioxide fermentation by-product in the bottle. Since the wine is now 6 years old, it has been sitting on the yeast lees for a while. This leads to a yeasty, brioche flavor, in fact, when we drank this sparkling, after we first made it, it had all the hallmarks of a beer! It has evolved since then and was a nice foil for the oysters.

For dinner, my husband made salmon which he coated with a pepper rub and baked it in the oven for 20 minutes. For the side dishes we had wild rice and sugar snap peas. The dinner was made more enjoyable by the generous contribution of a 2017 Domaine Leflaive Meursault, a Premier Cru Chardonnay from Burgundy, that our friends brought to share. Our friend is partial to Domaine Leflaive and we were the lucky beneficiaries. The wine has 7 years of age on it now and was a full bodied wine with a nice influence of oak which came off to me as a bit caramel like.
The wine opened up as dinner progressed and it was the perfect compliment to the salmon.

Go-Pro in the Vineyard

My husband set up a GoPro and took this time lapse video of us shoot thinning in the Chardonnay.

Vintage 2024: June is the Month of Pruning

The month of June is the time for pruning the new growth in the vineyard. This year, we are all about air flow. It seems like the right time to do this task. In the past, we have made several passes in the vineyard beginning with disbudding, shoot thinning and cleaning the graft union. This year, we are attempting to do those three tasks in one pass. Here is an example in the Chardonnay where we have removed two shoots to give the remaining shoots ample airflow.

Shoot thinning is one cultural method of attempting to keep the powdery and downy mildews at bay. We have been aggressive this year about shoot thinning and our mantra has been "air flow, air flow". Our friend Laurie and her daughter Hannah came to help us on Saturday and it is a difficult thing to cut the shoots that have flowers, knowing that they are potential bunches of grapes. However, we are shooting for quality grapes and not quantity grapes. Here is the half of the above photo in context:

We are on the clock with pruning duties. Once flowering begins and fruitset follows, the fruit is at a very fragile state and any shaking of the shoots can cause the fruit to "shatter". Checking the annual cycle of growth chart that we keep, it appears that the typical flowering occurs around the third week in June. The flowers that we are seeing in the Chardonnay are still in the "compact" stage, Eichhorn-Lorenz Stage 15. That should give us a little time to make our way through the Chenin Blanc and the reds!