2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Chardonnay

A few days ago, we had our friends Mary and Barry over for dinner. Mary is a Chardonnay aficionado, but very particular in her style of Chardonnay. For dinner, we prepared a Greek meal with spanakopita (spinach pie) as the appetizer. We paired this 2023 Matthiasson Napa Valley Linda Vista Chardonnay with the spanakopita. It was a beautiful pairing and all of us enjoyed the Matthiasson Chardonnay.
We have been watching many episodes of Steve Matthiasson and his wife, Jill, on SOMM TV. My husband has been especially interested in Steve Matthiasson because his philosophy of winemaking is like ours. In fact, when we went to Napa in February, we tried to visit them, but Steve was unavailable. On their website, they describe the Linda Vista vineyard:
"The Linda Vista Vineyard is just across the creek behind our house. The West Oak Knoll area where we live is one of the classic Chardonnay spots in Napa—Chardonnay from just behind us won the famous Paris tasting in 1976. The cool winds off the San Pablo Bay bring acidity and freshness, while the Napa sun gives flesh and ripeness. The 25-year old vines were originally planted by Beringer, and we’re proud to take our turn caring for them as the vineyard develops maturity. Certified Organic."
We loved the Matthiasson Chardonnay so much that my husband is thinking of purchasing more!

Passionfruit Estate: The Genesis of Our Label

My husband and I had many iterations of label designs before we finally agreed on one that we both liked. It was a Google Earth view that showed our vineyard at the head of the Mystic River. My husband took that view and stylized it and that has become our label.
The Google Earth view shown below on the left hand side has our vineyard circled in red. It also shows the Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium landmarks as references. The right hand side shows what my husband did with the view. It's more of a tilted view which not only shows Mason's Island, but Fisher's Island as well as Long Island and the Connecticut coastline in our area.

Through time we have had Michelle in California and Kimberly here in Stonington help us refine the label with the appropriate font styles and sizes to achieve the right balance. Sometimes we forget to tell the people who come to purchase our wines what the label is about. We hope they can figure out that it is a view from our vineyard.

Vintage 2025: June Update

It's already four days into June! The rain has made our spring pruning duties very difficult. In fact, the last cuttings from pruning the vineyard was removed yesterday with the help of our friends Mary and Barry.

Yes, full disclosure. We were working until Monday to prune our vineyard. You can see that the cuttings in the sled have green growth on them. Everything looked so promising at the end of March, but April and May were two months full of rain. We don't prune on days that rain so when we could we were pruning. Pruning and laying down the canes became, pruning, laying down the canes and disbudding! We had to be very careful when doing those activities so as not to knock off a bud or later, a young shoot. But now we are finally done! Thank you Mary, Barry and Rich for helping us with the cutting removal.
While Mary and Barry and my husband were busy with cutting removal, I worked on shoot tucking the Barbera. I call the Barbera our wild child because the developing shoots are not stiff like other varieties and have a tendency to lean any which way that they want to.
Here is what the Barbera looks like now:

They have reached the second catch wire. Looking at the buds, the growth seems a little slower than normal. From here on out, it is a race to ensure that the shoots are thinned!

2015 Passionfruit Estate Chenin Blanc

A few days ago, my husband looked into our stash of wine and found this bottle of 2015 Chenin Blanc, the first wine that we made. The wine is now 10 years old!
The color indicated that it was still in good condition! The flavors were of lemon and pineapple with an acidic finish. It went well with the Asian food we were eating that evening, teriyaki mariated pork sandwiches with Hawaiian style macaroni salad.
In 2015, we might had about 150 Chenin Blanc vines that survived the disasterous polar vortex of the winter of 2014 and these vines gave us 360 clusters of grapes. Our friends who helped us harvest the grapes came to our home to foot stomp the grapes in an Igloo cooler! The nice thing about the cooler was that it had a spigot where the juice could be drained into a 5 gallon jug.
Prior to the foot stomping, my husband converted our old refrigerator into a temperature controlled environment with which to conduct a slow and low temperature fermentation.
From that initial fermentation we learned to be patient and let the yeast do it's thing. We also learned that the flavor of newly fermented Chenin Blanc can be searingly acidic! My husband refers to this flavor as "jet fuel". Now we know if we taste "jet fuel" our Chenin Blanc is on the right trajectory on it's journey to being the Chenin Blanc that our terroir produces.
Since we only use 100% grapes grown on our vineyard, yeast to ferment the juice and less than 50 parts per million (ppm) sulfites to preserve the wine, we like to say that our wine is the pure expression of the grape varietal.

2025 Annual Cycle of Growth

Every year, I try to keep track of the major events in the grapevine cycle. This is captured in a table called the Annual Cycle of Growth. Here is what we saw last year. I am also filling out the approximate date of budbreak for 2025.

The annual cycle of growth for 2024 is rather incomplete because we had an unusual ripening or should I say "unripening" year in 2024. In last July, our vines were hit with a terrible case of downy mildew in the Chardonnay. The problem was not that severe in the Auxerrois and the Chenin Blanc but for the first time, we needed to drop grapes in the Chenin Blanc in order to get the Brix to be at 20-21 degrees.
With all of the rain that we are having this year, the new shoots are growing like we have never seen before!
Photos to come.

We Love Chenin Blanc!

We have planted almost half of our vineyard in Chenin Blanc. It's one of the white wines that really appeals to our palates. Our first harvest of Chenin Blanc occurred in 2015. We took a very minimalist approach to making the wine. We let the juice that came from foot stomping the grapes with our friends and let it cold settle in the refrigerator that my husband converted into a place that we could conduct a long and slow cool fermentation.
After cold settling, we racked the juice and little of the fine grape pulp to use as food for our yeast of choice, QA23, to conduct the fermentation. At that time just shortly after fermentation was over, we sampled the wine and my husband thought that the wine tasted like "jet fuel". Over the years of making Chenin, we have come to understand that this is what Chenin tastes like just shortly after fermentation and if we achieve this, then we know that our Chenin is on it's evolution to tasting delicious!
There are many Chenin styles that include:

• Sec
• Dry
• Sec-tendre
• Off-dry
• Demi-Sec
• Semi-sweet
• Moelleux
• Sweet

We make our Chenin always in the "sec" style because we ferment the wine to dryness. We tried our hand at making "sec-tendre" where we have fermentated our wine to dryness and then added a sussreserve, in the style of some German Rieslings. We also made a pétillant naturel, which is a sparkling wine made in the ancestral method without disorgement of the dead yeast and lees. We do make a sweet wine, in our case it is botrytized Chenin that is infected with noble rot and harvested in December.
What we really enjoy about Chenin Blanc is that it is food friendly, especially with oysters and seafood that is found in our area.

2020 Robert Foley Charbono

Our friends came back from their winter sojourn to Florida so we had them over for dinner. My husband made his stuffed pork chops. We had a side of wild rice and a simple green salad. The wine that we chose to pair with dinner was a 2020 Robert Foley Charbono. Our friends were curious about the wine since they had never heard of Charbono before so we told them the story of visiting Robert Foley and tasting his Charbono. We all liked the wine very much! The alcohol level was 13.2% which is the sweet spot for a red wine. The Charbono paired perfectly with the stuffed pork chops. I tasted ripe purple grapes with blackberries in the Charbono. It had very soft tannins, but a good backbone of acidity. This is the wine that inspired Robert Foley to become a wine maker.
In Robert Foley's own words:¹
Charbono is one of the lost grape varieties – almost. Recent reports indicate there are only about 80 acres of this variety in California. The original cuttings were imported to Calistoga in the Napa Valley from the Savoie region in the French Alps in about 1880. Its original name was Doux Noir, or “soft black,” later called Charbonneau (carbon water). Subsequently, Charbono was wiped out in Europe by the Phylloxera root louse infestation.
Some believed it to be the Italian grape variety Dolcetto but this was proven not to be the case through genetic testing. After repeal of Prohibition in the U.S., Charbono was used by Inglenook for blending with their new Cask Cabernet wines and small amounts were bottled as varietal wine. I tasted the 1968 Inglenook Charbono from cask in 1969 and was inspired to become a winemaker with that taste.

The stuff pork chops that my husband makes is always a wonderful meal. Take a pork chop that is between 3/4 to 1 inch thick and cut to make a pocket. In the picture above, my husband used wilted spinach, grated gruyere, dried cranberries and garlic flavored croutons for the stuffing. He seared the pork chops in a pan and then put it into a 300 degree oven, to bring the internal temperature of the pork to 140-150 degrees. During the time the pork chop is in the oven, my husband takes the pan drippings and makes a sauce. You can stuff the pork chop with a stuffing of your choice.
Charbono and stuffed pork chops! Bon appétit!
References:
1. Robert Foley Vineyards.

Vintage 2025: May Day!

It is already May! The April showers really put us behind in our pruning duties and we are working as fast as we can to lay our canes down on the fruiting wire. With the exception of the Cabernet Sauvignon, all of our varieties are at some stage of budbreak:

Budbreak appears to be a little on the early side this year. It could be because of the way we approached our pruning this year, taking off all of the unnecessary growth from last year, leaving behind only the canes that we were considering as this year's fruiting cane. So, all of the energy was concentrated in the few remaining canes.
At this time of the year, we always keep our fingers crossed hoping that we don't have another year like 2023 when we had a frost on May 18th. As of today, we have finished laying down our canes for half of our vineyard!

We hope the weather gods grant us some nice weather for the upcoming week although by the looks of it, we might have to work under rainy conditions!

Sometimes Wine Makes Magic

Recently, my husband and I were watching SOMM TV which featured the Martinellis and a vertical tasting that they did. Martinelli Winery is located in Sonoma. Watching this episode reminded me of one of our most favorite memories of having wine with a meal. This memory comes from the time we had our Greek friends over for dinner. One of his favorite mantras was "planning is overrated" so I'm sure this dinner was an impromptu, spontaneous kind of get together. I wondered what year the Martinelli Jackass Hill Zinfandel that we had was and what year we drank the wine with our friends. My husband suggested that we probably have that bottle of wine on our Wall of Fame. I gave the idea of looking through our more than 150 bottles of wine on our Wall of Fame serious consideration and then I had an epiphany. In 2021, I did a blogpost on the wines on our Wall of Fame and there it was, the 1997 Jackass Hill Zinfandel.
On that evening when we had the 1997 Jackass Hill Zinfandel, we ordered pizza to take out. When we opened the wine, the aroma that emanated from the bottle was indescribably amazing. The four of us all sensed that remarkable event simultaneously. We drank the wine and had the pizza and that event is now indeliably etched in our memories.
Every now and then we recreate that evening, by bringing out a bottle of Jackass Hill Vineyards Zinfandel and ordering take out pizza, but there is really only one magical moment. I still need to figure out what year it was that this dinner occurred. So far I've narrowed it down to sometime between 2000-2006.
Epilogue: Our friends recently went to Martinelli winery and visited Jackass Hill vineyards. There they learned why the vineyard is called Jackass Hill. It was planted in the 1880's by the original founder, Giuseppe Martinelli. The location where he planted this vineyard has a 60-65 degree slope and is NOT terraced. The saying in the family is "you'd have to be a jackass to farm a hill that steep!" So in Giuseppe's honor, the vineyard was named Jackass Hill Vineyard.

Vintage 2025: April Showers!

At the end of March we were very hopeful with the progress that we were making in the vineyard. We thought we were ahead in our pruning. We had a stragegy, then came April! The English proverb, "April Showers Bring May Flowers" was quite descriptive of April this year. Then this past Saturday April 19, we had temperatures in the high 70s so with all the rain and the heat, the April showers brought dandelions flowering in the vineyard! We don't mind having dandelions in the vineyard because the taproot breaks up compacted soil and creates a healthy environment for the soil.

But the dandelions are not the only things growing, the grass is growing and we are finding that all of this rain has put us behind in our pruning!
But Geoff to the rescue! This morning, he came to help us with the pruning of last year's canes from the fruiting cane. My husband and Geoff worked together and I came behind them to cut the fruiting cane from the fruiting wire. The three of us were able to get 6 rows done in the morning shift!
We are feeling better about finishing our pruning duties before budbreak! Thank you Geoff!

Wine Tasting Invitation from Our Friend

Last Friday, our friend Mia, invited us to a wine tasting organized by sommelier James Sligh. Mia hosted this event at her neighbor's Brian and Jessie's home. The unifying theme was natural wines chosen from wineries along the Rhone River.
James sent Mia, the following wines:

It was an event held on line with others around the country signing in. This was a first for us and it was very interesting to participate in with explanations from James. Mia, Brian, Jessie and we brought food to nosh on while tasting and learning about the wines.
The first wine we tasted was the O Faya Farm 2022 Jutz D'Heida, a white wine from the Valais region in Switzerland. It is a natural wine made by Ilona (Thetax) Hunkeler from the Savagnin grape. The Savagnin grape is one of the Founder Varieties so it was very interesting to me to taste a wine made from this grape. The synonym for the Savagnin grape is Traminer and the Gewurztraminer grape is the aromatic, pink-skinned mutation of Savagnin. Interestingly, Savagnin is also one of the parents of Chenin Blanc.
The next wine was the l'Aitennement Nebula from Savoie, Franc. It was a blend of Douce Noire and Mondeuse. There was a discussion on what the Douce Noire and Mondeuse grapes are, which was interesting. What I learned is that Douce Noire is another name for Charbono, grown in the Savoy region. We recently had a close encounter with Charbono when we visited Robert Foley. Mondeuse is another grape grown in the Savoy region. The wine was a very nice easy drinking red wine.
Full disclosure, the rest of the wines were much less discussed, but tasted and enjoyed. The le Cortis Brisure was a blend of 50% Altesse, 50% Gamay Teinturier (red-fleshed Gamay). The Vin de France 2022 le Grand Blanc was a blend of 50% Roussane, 30% Marsanne and 20% Viognier. Early in my wine drinking life I had a white Châteauneuf-du-Pape which forever spoiled my appreciation of Roussane, Marsanne and Viognier. I taste petrol and an oiliness that I can't bring myself to appreciate. Also on the tasting lineup was the Thibaud Capellaro 2022 Pierre Taillee Syrah. The 2023 Lirac Romain le Bars Rose was the final wine in the lineup made from Mourvèdre. It was a very pleasant gathering and learning experience.
James Sligh is an artist and sent Mia the following water color of the Rhone and where the wine we tasted is located along the path of the river.

It was a very unique experience to participate in and we are grateful to have been included in this wine tasting. Thank you, Mia, Brian and Jessie!

Wine Appreciation: Swirl, Sniff and Sip

I remember the first time I was given the challenge of swirling wine in a glass, my husband said, "We cannot go to the International Pinot Noir Conference if you don't know how to swirl wine in a glass." That was in 2006, nearly 20 years ago! I confess it took me awhile to master the art of swirling wine in the glass, but that is the first requisite for wine enjoyment.
In writing this blog, I checked the Internet and there are 5Ss to wine tasting and not the 3 that I am familiar with. The other 2Ss bookend the ones that I am familiar with so it goes: See, Swirl, Sniff, Sip and Savor. I agree. We do give the wine we are drinking a "see". We check the color of the wine regardless whether it is a red or a white wine, especially if it is an aged wine. The color of a wine can indicate many things even before the swirl. Swirling the wine releases the volatile components in a wine that contributes to the aroma that one perceives. After the appropriate swirl, the sniff, can reveal many different attributes of the wine. Then, the sip, how does the wine taste on the palate? If the wine lives up to expectations, the next step is to savor and enjoy!
Recently, we had a real life experience of another component to wine appreciation that may go neglected. It is just as important in wine tasting to serve the wine in the appropriate glass.

My husband and I did this test recently where we put the same wine in a conical glass and then a glass with a bowl. Even before the swirl, the conical glass made the wine mute, the glass with a bowl was already releasing some aromatics. It is much easier to swirl in a glass with a bowl than it is to swirl in a conical glass. After swirling, the aroma compounds in the wine were much more apparent in the glass with the bowl.
Lastly, regardless whether it is a white or a red wine, a well made wine will evolve throughout the drinking experience. If it is a white wine taken out from being chilled, a white wine will reach its sweet spot in temperature and be just delightful! So see, swirl, sniff, sip and savor!

Book Review: Napa The Story of an American Eden

In February, we visited Kelly and Bob Foley of Robert Foley Vineyards on Howell Mountain. We got there in the pouring rain but inside the tasting room, Kelly and Bob welcomed us warmly. We spent one hour telling stories and there were many! Bob was telling us about his love of Charbono after tasting an Inglenook Charbono in his formative years. He went to U.C. Davis and got a degree in Enology and Viticulture. Somehow Robert Mondavi's name came up and Bob told us that he went to school with one of the Mondavis and at that time they pronounced their name "Mon-day-vi". It was only after Robert Mondavi began his winery that Robert began to pronounce the family name "Mon-dah-vi".
After our trip to Napa, I decided that I needed to read more about Napa. Full disclosure, I have read Napa The Story of an American Eden once before and wrote about it, but in light of our recent trip to Napa, where we visited Bob and Kelly, I thought that it would be good to refresh myself by reading James Conoway's book again.
My first review was a general overview of the book. Since James Conoway begins by recounting how Jack and Jamie Davis were looking for a property to buy in Napa and then flashes back to some of the history, the read can be a little disorienting. I thought I would try to put some kind of chronology on the book by highlighting what I thought were some interesting facts about Napa.
Interesting tidbits from the book:

• Napa means grizzly, or harpoon point, or fish, or bounteous place
• George Calvert Yount, a trapper from North Carolina and the first white settler in Napa Valley, planted Mission vines bought from General Mariano Vallejo in Sonoma in 1838
• Agoston Haraszthy was a Balkan immigrant who started a winery in Sonoma, called Buena Vista, in 1856
• Wine was made commercially in Napa in 1858 by John Patchett
• Prussian immigrant and freethinker, Charles Krug, made wine in Napa three years after Patchett
• Beringer brothers from Germany, worked for Krug and in the late 1870s constructed their winery, tunneled into the mountain, and eventually built an elaborate seventeen-room mansion called the Rhine House
• Gustave Niebaum, a Finnish sea captain created an architectural wonder called Inglenook; Inglenook's first harvest was in 1882, Inglenook was one of the first wineries to put “Napa Valley” on its labels; Inglenook’s practice of vintage dating was also uncommon
• Hamilton Crabb as the owner of the To Kalon vineyard in Oakville
• J. Leland Stewart was the owner of Souverain Cellars on Howell Mountain
• Beaulieu Vineyard was owned by Georges de Latour and their enologist was André Tchelistcheff, in 1951 they hired Joe Heitz as assistant winemaker for $325 a month
• Tom (a du Pont) and his wife Martha May bought a vineyard from the Rhodeses and named it Martha’s Vineyard, in honor of his wife. Martha’s Vineyard produced some fine Napa Valley Cabernet grapes, which were sold to Joe Heitz

I was interested in reading about Joe Heitz because Bob said that he spent one year learning about vineyard and winery work from Joe. In reading the book, I also learned that Robert Mondavi did indeed change the pronunciation of his name to "Mon-dah-vi". There were many other interesting factoids in the book which I am thinking of summarizing in a future post.

2022 Sokol Blosser Dundee Hills Pinot Noir

Our son paid us a visit this past weekend so that he could get together with his friends and have a play date for his daughter, our 4 year old grand daughter. We met up for dinner which was moussaka, Greek salad and a nice Tuscan boule bread. Typically, when we have a Greek meal, our drink of choice is ouzo, which brings back wonderful memories of sunny Santorini. However, this evening, our son anted up a 2022 Sokol Blosser Dundee Hills Pinot Noir. I have to say, it went very well with the meal. The Pinot Noir was nice and smooth on the finish and tasted like a mature wine.

I wanted to find out more about this wine and looked on the internet and on the Sokol Blosser website was everything I wanted to know!
Here is the vintage notes from the 2022 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir:
What started as a dry winter turned into a deluge of rain in the springtime. We had the wettest and coldest April/May/June in recorded (130 years) history. Freezing temperatures on the morning of April 14th and 15th knocked back the fragile new growth and we thought our crop yields would be down by 50-60%. In over 51 years of growing grapes here in the Dundee Hills we have never seen a freezing event during the growing season, so we had no idea what was going to happen. The primary buds froze and died, but the secondary buds came on, produced fewer but larger clusters, and the vines made a miraculous comeback. We had the 2nd warmest and driest summer on record, and then we got to October. Everything depended on good ripening conditions in the month of October since bloom was much later. Fortunately we got the warmest October in Oregon history, we were able to let the grapes hang, and the rains stayed put until all our Estate fruit was in on Thursday, October 27th. The fruit got nice and ripe, and we are thrilled with the wine produced from this vintage!
As a grape grower, I really appreciated the vintage notes.
References:
1. Estate Pinot Noir Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon 2022.

Streamlining Pruning Tasks in the Vineyard

It's taken many seasons and each year, we try to streamline our spring pruning duties in the vineyard. We begin by cutting the tops of last year's shoots which are now hardened canes. In the beginning, we would just throw the cuttings in the middle of the row and then come back to gather them up and take it out of the vineyard using a tarp. After a few years, we began piling the cuttings at each linepost to give us a visual guide as to where the cuttings were. This actually speeded up the process and then the big breakthrough came when my husband procured a sled from Alaska to remove the cuttings from each row.
This is a picture from last year where our friend Barry came to help my husband with the removal of all the cuttings.

Another thing that we implimented last year was to lower all of the nets to the lowest notch on our lineposts. Every year, we always talked about how we should be lowering our nets to make work easier for us during the growing season before we have to deploy our nets. The stumbling block was always "how would we secure the nets". The way we secured the nets had to be easy, preferrably not involving any cutting which might inadvertantly damage the netting. After much brain storming, we came up with velcro and that has made all the difference!

At the end of harvest last year we lowered the nets and velcroed the netting to each line post, which gave us a leg up on our pruning tasks this spring.
The first thing we did this spring was to remove all of the Agfast, the little black ties, shown circled in red in the picture above, that we put into the trellis to prevent the new shoots from growing into each other and to allow for airflow. In the past, it took an entire month to remove the Agfast, but with the nets in the low position, it made it possible to see where all those little black ties were and this year, it took us only 15 days to remove all the Agfast.
The next improvement in our method was the realization that we could cut last year's fruiting cane from this year's potential fruiting cane while leaving it still attached to the trellis. This pre-cut puts all of the energy of growth into the few remaining shoots!

The images above show our workflow. First, cut the tops off last year's growth, pile the cuttings at the linepost and then make a pre-pruning cut indicating what we will remove from the vineyard, leaving what we will use as this year's fruiting canes. We feel that this pre-pruning is important because as the vines begin to wake up, all of the energy of growth will go into the few canes that we have left. At the moment, 20 out of the 36 rows of vines have had this pre-pruning cut made.
After 13 years, we are feeling like we are finally getting the hang of being grape farmers!

Spring Sighting in the Vineyard

We are in the vineyard, doing our first prunings. While I am focussed on just pruning, my husband is pruning as well as watching out for interesting and unusual things in the vineyard. A few days ago, while we were working together, he came across the first ladybugs in our vineyard. The ladybug looked a little weird and was moving quite slowly. It had some yellow stuff on it's wings. Although it looked like pollen, when we took some close up shots of the ladybug, the yellow stuff looked like this:

At home, we learned that this lady bug was infected with the Hesperomyces virescens fungus and what we were seeing was the yellow fruiting bodies of the fungus. I came upon an excellent and freely available article called "Integrative taxonomy reveals hidden species within a common fungal parasite of ladybirds", that contained a very magnified view of the fungus:¹

This illustration shows that what we perceived as pollen were groups of the fungal thalli. The illustration on the left shows a single thallus in all it's magnified glory!
We speculate that these ladybugs overwintered in a sheltered place and were out in the spring weather. When and where they became infected with the fungus is a mystery but now we know that the yellow stuff on the ladybugs are fungi!
References:
1. Haelewaters, D., De Kesel, A. & Pfister, D.H., Integrative taxonomy reveals hidden species within a common fungal parasite of ladybirds, Sci Rep 8, 15966 (2018).

2016 Ashes and Diamonds Cabernet Franc

My husband was very interested in trying a bottle of Ashes and Diamonds and he got his hands on this 2016 Cabernet Franc.

His interest in this wine was peaked by the fact that Steve Matthiasson, one of their winemakers made this particular vintage. We do like the fact that the back label includes information such as the harvest date, pH, TA and winemaker. We tried to see Steve Matthiasson when we visited Napa recently, but had no luck.
My husband made his special smoked steak which we had with baked potato and a side salad. This wine already has some age on it which is very nice. To my palate it was still very young with a tannic finish. This particular wine was made from a blend of grapes from vineyards located in Los Carneros, Oakville Knoll and Yountville.
Ashes and Diamonds is located in Napa Valley.

Perhaps the next time that we are in Napa, we will put Ashes and Diamonds on our to-visit agenda.

Dinner with Friends

On Sunday, we attended a dinner that our friends had planned in order for my husband and another friend, Christy to talk about living in California in the early 70's. But, it became more than that. My husband made his salmon cakes for an appetizer and we had "slow" food. The conversation flowed and we enjoyed the evening.
Christy provided the wine for the meal which was grilled lamb chops, green beans almondine and crispy potatoes. We were treated to a 1993 Louis Jadot Chapelle Chambertin and a 2000 Chateau Pontet Canet. The ullage on the 1993 Louis Jadot was at the shoulder and the cork was pushed in a little, but the wine was still hanging in there tasting very much of burgundy. The 2000 Pontet Canet was still youthful, redolent with blackberries with a long finish.

Good friends, good food, good wine! You can never plan to have a memorable evening it just happens!

Vintage 2025: It's March and That Means It's Time to Prune

The weather is becoming warmer so there is no excuse! It's time to get to the vineyard and begin our pruning duties. The first thing to do is to trim off the tops of last year's growth.
When we went to the vineyard on Monday morning, we had some company.

It was Gavin from the tree trimming crew! He brought some big guns! Unfortunately, Gavin was not here to help us prune our vineyard. Gavin and Colton were here to trim up the trees that are currently dormant and very near the power lines owned by EverSource. While we were pruning, we were able to see Colton skillfully maneuvering the helicopter to get the saw to the trees near the powerlines. Colton and Gavin used our south field as a heliport. They were great! They let my husband take these movies of their operation. Here is Colton in the helicoptor:

That's Gavin, ground crew in blue and Colton, helicopter pilot in green. We enjoyed the diversion from our work, but now it is back to manual pruning for us!

SOMM TV: Liber Pater Wines

During the winter, (wait, it's spring!) we are engaged in our continuing education in wine. This past week, we were watching an episode of SOMM TV which featured the Liber Pater Wines. Loïc Pasquet is the winemaker at Liber Pater, but he insists that he is a vigneron. His claim to fame is that he is currently acknowledged as selling the most expensive wine in the world.
How did this come about? Just a litle bit of history. During the time of Napoleon III, when Napoleon commissioned the 1855 classification, the grapes were grown on pre-phylloxera soils. After phylloxera came to Europe and caused the near extinction of grape vines, in order to survive, almost all European grapevines were grafted on to American rootstock. Some claim that own-rooted vines have a different flavor profile than grafted vines.
Enter Loïc Pasquet! After pursuing engineering studies in Dijon, Pasquet became side-tracked by the world of fine wine, and most specifically by a desire to (re)discover the ancient grape varieties of pre-phylloxera Bordeaux. Guided by his mentor, Savoyard Michel Grigard, who was instrumental in bringing back Mondeuse, Altesse, and Jacquère to the Alpine vineyards, Pasquet began his quest to ressurect pre-phylloxera Bordeaux varieties such as Castet, Pardotte, Tarnay, Petite Vidure, Mancin, Camaralet, and Saint-Macaire. To date, Pasquet has “exhumed” 14 varieties in total!¹
Pasquet identified the small commune of Ladiras with its “magnificent gravel outcrop” and excellent drainage, and a “cocktail of sandy topsoil” as an excellent location to grow his own-rooted vines.
Pasquet farms two plots, Liber Pater and Denarius. Pasquet says that both Liber Pater and Denarius wines are 100 percent ungrafted, organic, and made with native grape varieties. Of his two vineyards, he says that, in the Denarius vineyard, “we have more clay, so the wine is very soft, while Liber Pater is very elegant, more for the gods.” ²

What is it that is so unusual about Loïc Pasquet wines? The main grape variety used in both Liber Pater and Denarius is Petite Vuidure, an old name for Cabernet Sauvignon. It is blended with the nearly extinct varieties Mancin, Castets, Saint-Macaire, Pardotte, Gros Cabernet, and Cabernet Goudable, as well as Tarnay Coulant.
After the 2015 vintage, the wines at Liber Pater are being made from 100 percent native varieties and 100 percent ungrafted vines (Franc de Pied). Pasquet produces only 500 bottles a year. Some years he doesn't make any wine from Liber Pater. What will a bottle of Liber Pater cost you? $33,000.00! Pasquet will say that what he is offering is time traveling in a glass. An opportunity to taste a wine that Napoleon III might have enjoyed from a pre-phylloxera, own rooted vineyard.
Is this resurrection of ancient varietals on own rooted vines enough to justify the price? I for one will never know. Sad.
References:
1. Simon Field, Liber Pater: The shock of the old, The World of Fine Wine, August 17, 2023.
2. Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen, Why a $33,000 Wine Made From Rare Grapes Is Polarizing the Wine World, Robb Report, October 27, 2024.

What is Auxerrois?

We grow Auxerrois in our vineyard. Many people are not familiar with this grape variety, so I thought I would do a little research and blog about it. The name itself can be pronounced as either "awk-ser-WAH" or "oak-sair-wah" or even "oh-sehr-WAH". Genetic testing suggests that Auxerrois is a sibling of Chardonnay, both being offspring of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.
Auxerrois can be found in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Luxembourg with a handful of plantings in North America and South Africa. In the United States, Auxerrois has found a home in Oregon and on the Leelanau Peninsula located on the 45th Parallel.
In our vineyard, the Auxerrois is not the first variety to budbreak in the spring. However, the Auxerrois is the first to ripen and the first grape that we harvest. We watch the Brix and when it gets to around 17, we also test for the pH and the total acidity. We want to be able to keep the acidity so that the Auxerrois is nicely balanced.

As far as we know, we are the only vineyard and winery on the east coast growing and making Auxerrois wine.
References:
1. Layla Schlack, Understanding Auxerrois Wine, Wine Enthusiast, October 17, 2023.
2. Aurora Cellars, Discovering Auxerrois: A Hidden Gem in the World of White Wine,

Racking Our 2022 Auxerrois

This past week, we racked our 2022 Auxerrois from the four stainless steel barrels that they were in, into a 240 gallon IBC tank with fittings. Before racking the wine, we tasted the wine from each barrel and they were slightly different in aromas and flavors so racking and blending the wines is a good thing to do.
The 2022 Auxerrois had the following numbers:

Variety	Harvest Date	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Auxerrois	September 2, 2022	3097 lbs	248 gal	20.0	3.16	7.1 g/L

The wine coming through the site-glass was clear and light yellow in color. The racking of the four barrels took about one hour. We think we ended up with approximately 225 gallons in the holding/mixing tank. The cleaning of the barrels took another 3 hours. As is always the case, the cleaning takes much more time than the time spent actually working with the wine! While we cleaned the barrels, I noticed that the tartrate crystals coming out of the barrels were the largest that I have ever seen!

Of all of the vintages of Auxerrois that we have harvested and made into wine, the 2022 has been the most abundant. We are crossing our fingers that this year we will have another year as good as our 2022.

Robert Foley Makes Charbono Wine

When we visited to Kelly and Robert Foley, he told us that one of the wines that he has a special affinity for is Charbono. I had never heard of the grape variety before, so Bob told his story. The entire reason why he entered the wine making business was the memorable 1968 Inglenook Charbono that he drank when he was a youngster (age withheld to protect the innocent). After that, Bob was hooked and when a friend of his father's urged him to get an Enology and Viticulture degree, he went to U.C. Davis and did just that. After graduating, he worked with Joe Heitz at Heitz Cellars and was the founding member of Markham. He also spent 15 years as the winemaker at Pride Mountain. He was encourage by Pride Mountain to begin his own label and the rest is history.
We tasted his 2020 Charbono. It was delicious and appealed to our palate.
Bob said that the Charbono grape comes from Savoie in eastern France. Italian immigrants brought the Charbono to California but they called it Barbera.
In the late 1930s Dr. Harold Olmo, a UC Davis geneticist, determined that what was thought to be Barbera was actually Charbono. Professor Carole Meredith of UC Davis and her research team determined by DNA testing in 1999 that "the Charbono of California is the French variety Corbeau. Corbeau is associated with the Savoie region of France. One of its synonyms is Charbonneau, and it also has been called Douce Noire.
In France and Italy the Charbono grape is a desirable addition to many blends, imparting a deep, rich color, tannins and fruit. It gives a good "middle finish" to the wines.¹
In 1989, Inglenook had 35 acres planted to Charbono. Inglenook bottled it's first Charbono in 1941. Currently, here are less than 65 acres planted to Charbono in the Napa Valley, making it a very rare varietal wine.¹
In 2022, Brian Freedman wrote, Everything You Need to Know About Charbono and listed Robert Foley's Charbono as one of the most important producers of Charbono in California, and this bottling is, vintage after vintage, one of the more consistent and exciting.²
You can be sure that we ordered a few bottles of the 2020 Charbono and are anxiously awaiting the shipment!
References:
1. Patricia Savoie, Wine Business Monthly, Charbono, May 17, 2003.
2. Brian Freedman, Food & Wine, Everything You Need to Know About Charbono, July 5, 2022.

Visit to Napa Valley

This past week, before we visited my husband's sister in Grass Valley, we took a half day excursion to Napa Valley. It has really been a very long time since we went to Napa.

We came in from the south end of Napa and saw this iconic statue:

It was raining when we got there and where there is rain, there is a rainbow!

The rained pooled in the vineyards on the valley floor:

Our first and only destination for the day was the Robert Foley Winery located in Angwin on Howell Mountain. We wanted to go there because having tasted his 2003 Robert Foley Claret and learning that his mother lived in Milford, CT and he had a harpsichord that he took to Zuckerman's (right down the road from our home) for repairs, it seemed as if there was a cosmic connection. We made arrangements before hand and Kelly was nice enough to have Bob fly out of South Carolina the evening before so that we could meet him in the morning.
Did I say that it was raining in Napa? Driving up Howell Mountain was a little treacherous as the rain swelled the stream and some branches of trees seemed to have come down and in the process of being washed away.
As we let ourselves in past the open gate that led to the winery, Kelly pulled up in her car and we followed her the short distance. Bob came out to greet us and for the next hour, we had a great time talking about anything and everything, including Kelly and my husband's love of cooking.
At 10:30, we were joined by a couple, Mike and Anna from Maryland. We tasted 8 wines! The six shown below as well as a 2019 Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and their port, Conclusao. All of their wines were delicious! We really liked the Charbono. Bob told us the history of how he came to acquire a vineyard in Napa that was growing this unique grape.

All too soon, the time with Bob and Kelly came to an end. I took a photo of his crush pad:

Bob and Kelly were such gracious hosts! We enjoyed our time with them and hope that they will take us up on our offer to visit us when they come to the East Coast. Thank you so much Kelly and Bob!

Vintage 2025: February Notes

I can't believe that I missed writing a Vintage 2025: January Notes! It is already February in the new year and as Punxsutawney Phil's prediction for 2025, we are going to have 6 more weeks of cold weather. We recently had our first major snowfall along the coast and had another snowfall that began on Wednesday evening, February 12 and continued into Thursday morning.
This week continues with temperatures that hover in the high twenties to the high thirties. However, by next Monday we should see temperatures in the forties and that means it will be time to get back in the vineyard to begin pruning!

Tasting Our 2024 Late Harvest Chenin Blanc

Our 2024 late harvest Chenin blanc is coming along on it's tragectory to being bottled shown in the pictures below.
We tasted it and thought it was balanced with stone fruits like apricots, and honey with a long finish punctuated with acid. While we did do a taste test we still need to check the level of residual sugar that is left in the wine.
The color in the glass was a pale yellow (shown in the photo below).
The photo on the right shows the color of our 2023 late harvest Chenin blanc at the same time a year ago, February 2024 for comparison.
The color in the carboy is very similar to our 2024 late harvest seen in the photo below.
We will continue to monitor and taste the wine until the wine tells us that it's time for bottling.

Happy Valentines Day to You!

Happy Valentines Day from Passionfruit Estate to you!

Meeting With the Crew from Veritable

Recently, (February 6) we met with the crew from Veritable because we wanted them to see our operation at Taugwonk and also to share some of our wine and the rum we brought back from Hawaii. Jacob, Finn, Damien and Joel came.

We showed them around our facility and answered some of questions that they had about fermentation. It turns out that although fermentation begins in a similar way with making beer, Joel is in charge of that, in making wine, we let the carbon dioxide escape while in making beer, trapping the carbon dioxide is critical to the carbonation that is part of beer.
We then had them taste our 2019 Chenin Blanc. We also opened up a 2019 Late Harvest Chenin. We moved on to the Ko Hana rum that we brought back from Hawaii and tasted it with the Manoa Ko Hana chocolate.

The Ko Hana was very smooth and went perfectly with the chocolate. It was easy to take small sips of the rum and chase it with a bit of chocolate.
Fin explained to us that the word Agricole is a French term that means rum made from sugar cane juice and not from the byproduct of sugar production which was molasses. Fin said that Napoleon had a lot to do with the rise of Rum Agricoles.

References:
1. Pierini, Marco, "A History of French Rum 5. Napoleon, Sugar Beet And Rum, The Rum University, October 22, 2019.

The Mission Grape at Mission San Gabriel

My husband has us subscribed to SOMM TV this winter and it is really interesting to watch the various shows on this program. One of the episodes that peaked my interest was about the Mission Grape planted at Mission San Gabriel in Los Angeles.
I have blogged about the Mission grape before in Red Grapes of California and California's First Woman Vine Grower and Two Horticultural Wonders.
This episode featured Terri Huerta, the Director of Development and Communications at Mission San Gabriel and the vine growing on the property known as the Mother Vine or Trinity Vine. From photographic evidence it was deduced to have been in existence as far back as 1765.¹

In the 1830s the vineyard at Mission San Gabriel had expanded to more than 170 acres producing as much as 50,000 gallons of wine per year! As Pierce's disease and Prohibition took its toll on grapevines, they fell into neglect with the exception of this Mother Vine that survived due to it's proximity to an underground aquifer.
In 2020, Huerta reached out to three Los Angeles winemakers Jasper Dickson and Amy Luftig from Angeleno Wine Company, Mark Blatty from Byron Blatty Wines and Patrick Kelley of Cavaletti Vineyard to see if they could propagate the vine. The winemakers noticed the grapes growing on the old vine and came up with the idea to make wine from one of the oldest grapevines planted in California.²
Harvest day came on November 3, 2024. Volunteers with BYOL (Bring Your Own Ladders), reached up to the grapes growing on a pergola. ³

Volunteer Jossalyn Emslie was enthusiastic about her participation in the harvest, saying that she was hooked. Nearly 400 pounds of grapes were harvested.

From this bounty, Dickson, Blatty and Kelley used a recipe found in the old Mission records and made their version of Angelica. The winemakers decided to use the Solera system, which is generally used in Sherry production to blend wines across vintages. Older wines add depth and complexity, and younger wines add acidity and freshness. For the Angelica, juice from the 2021, 2022 and 2023 vintages were combined with the initial wine from 2020.⁴
As the harvest ended, a bottle of Angelica, with a depiction of the Mother Vine as the label, was served to the harvesters. The volunteers sipped beneath grape leaves that swayed in the cool breeze, noting the sweet and fruity nature of the wine.

Post Script: Something I learned about the Mission grape. From DNA tests conducted in 2014, the grape vine at Mission San Gabriel is a hybrid betweenVitis girdiana, a wild grape native to Southern California, and Vitis vinifera.¹ The Mission grape is a prolific varietal that originated in the Castilla - La Mancha region of Spain and brought to California by the Franciscan Friars.
The Mission Grape is also known as Listán Prieto in Spain, as Criolla Chica in Argentina and Pais in Chile.


References:
1. Scerra, Jennifer, "The Unfurling Story of the Homestead’s Grapevines", The Homestead Museum, May 27, 2020.
2. Snyder, Garrett, "Wine from the ‘Mother Vine’: A trio of L.A. winemakers are harvesting historic grapes at San Gabriel Mission", Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2020.
3. Romano, Natalie, "How ‘Angelica’ was born: Winemakers honor San Gabriel Mission", Angelus, November 21, 2024.
4. Duzdabanyan, Ani, "Los Angeles wineries release bottling from 18th century vine", Decanter, November 29, 2023.
5. Agran, Libbie, "The Mission Grape – Five Centuries of History in the Americas", Wine History Project, February 25, 2021.