Week 19
May 5, 2002 to May 11, 2002 

	Sunday May 5, 2002 I came across a paper from Fife regarding Petite Sirah that may be of interest to some of you. My interest in the paper is because I am intending to use Petite Sirah in my new Rhone wine (Terre Melange) in 2002. Here is the link to the paper; you will need the (free) Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it.  Thursday May 9, 2002 When I posted the link to Fife on Sunday, I actually had not read all of the info. I was particularly interested in one section that talked about the planting of several different varieties. It seems that back about 100 years ago nurseries were not as careful about identifying budwood that was actually Petite Sirah. Varietals were intermingled and could have been Durif, zinfandel, "true" syrah, alicante bouschet, valdeguie, gamay, mondeuse, and others. Some farmers expecting to plant petite sirah actually planted these varietals creating a field blend. One such nursery may have been used for the planting of our Block 4. As I have said Block 4 has vines in it that have been identified as syrah, three different petite sirah clones (?), zinfandel, valdeguie and carignane. Some of the other vines that I have not identified officially could very well be some of the other varietals mentioned above. I probably should try to get Carol Meredith to visit this vineyard.  Some of you have been wondering what has happened with the drainage problem in my neighbor's vineyard. Two weeks ago I stated that there was water collecting over on my neighbor's property to the South and that they thought it was coming from a leakage out of my pond. They have since put a pipe all the way to the creek (1200 ft) and my pond is still full. The water collecting is obviously coming from the hills above. I think they still think it is coming from my property.  Yesterday we installed a gate that will be closed only at night and when we are away (or of course during football Sunday). This will give us the security and privacy when we need it.  Dave  Friday, May 10, 2002 From Brad (the web guy in the background) . . . .  We've just implemented a new system for internet orders.  Some people are concerned about sending credit card numbers over the internet.  We think that it is much more likely that credit card numbers will be stolen from big companies who store credit card numbers on their servers (where they can be hacked into). We've never done that. We have, however, started using a new software package that lets us use very sophisticated internet forms in conjunction with a secure server. So from here on out (we hope), when you use a form on our site, you will see a number of improvements.  For example, if you fail to fill out a required field or don't order anything (funny how that happens), the form won't go through. If you are out-of-state and try to pay sales tax, the form will let you send the order, but it will TELL you that you have included sales tax (some people do plan on picking the wine up in California). The system will do a special, simple check on credit card numbers which will keep simple typos from going through. It turns out that unless cards follow a very special mathematical setup, they don't pass this test, so we'll do the test and if your card fails, it is probably because you mistyped it.  It will let you know . . . .  All in all, we are happy with the new software and hope you will be too . . . Of course whenever we start something new, mistakes happen, so if you have a problem please write me at webmaster@coffaro.com!  We have a few more interesting things we hope to add to the website around the end-of-the-month or so that we think are fun and exciting.  Brad
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