July 14 - July 20, 2013

	Thursday July 18, 2013 There are rare times I forget about the time. I always know the time within 30 minutes, even in sleep so it is nice sometimes to escape into my diary. Most of my time has been with "Orange is the New Black". Pat and I have seen half the episodes, great but a lot of skin. 10:00 Pm: Google........I am buying more............. Amazon is gold............ BMW................I like driving German cars. I dislike Japanese autos. I like precession when I drive an auto so I want to be in as much control as possible. Autos from Lexis and Toyota in general, do not impress me. So I have purchased BMW 5 series for three times now back to my first 5 in 2004 vintage. I purchased another one with the 2007 vintage. Then finally I purchased the car of my dreams with a Graphite color. I purchased my 2011 535i in 2010 as one of the first cars to come into the country. I have 25,000 miles into it in three years. Then I purchased a Ford Fiesta to travel in short runs, especially in San Francisco. I found I liked it enough to start using it all the time, especially to Healdsburg and Santa Rosa. Maybe my 535i BMW got upset. Last week I felt bad for my 535i BMW so I fired it up with no trouble and took it down to Costco 30 miles away in Santa Rosa. I saw a warning stating my battery was having a problem. I charged it and still got the same warning SO I took it in yesterday and I was told the ground cable needed to be replaced and is on back order for over a week. WOW, I have to drive down to Irvine next week SO BMW in Santa Rosa has lent me a 3 series fun car to drive down the cost to Irvine. I love BMW. The guy says "Don't take it out of California", smiling. They took my credit card and license #. I had to initial 6 places and I was off in a hot 3 series with 8,000 miles on it. That made me feel better........maybe I should drive this 3 series down the coast OR should I take my Ford Fiesta............ OK.............. about wine tomorrow............... Saturday July 20, 2013 Almost every week we receive messages from customers concerned about the heat spoiling our wine when shipped. Back in 2009 I wrote about why I know wine can improve with heat. I once received Bordeaux wine and the cork was half up the bottle top. I called the shipper and he said it should be OK. I noticed the wine was warm so I sat it down for a few days and tried a bottle.........wow it was so good, but I did not have the wine before so I thought the wine could have been better if shipped at the right temperature. I then I started my winery 20 years ago. I had big demand at first and shipped wine to some great high end restaurants and retailers and looked in my cellar and I had only a few bottles of my 1996 wines so I called up the retailer and asked to send all my wine back. Sure I paid retail and shipping costs and high temperature while in transit, right in the middle of summer. A week or two later I opened a bottle of 2006 Estate Cuvee. Gee I thought it was great, not what i remembered from when i tried it a few weeks before. I tried another bottle a day or so later and was impressed again. I looked at the back of the bottle and saw a bar code. We did not use bar codes so i knew it was from Illinois back from the retailer. So the next day I pulled up a bottle of the same wine from Illinois and one from my cellar kept at 60 degrees. The one from Illinois was much more developed and complex. One time at bottling in July the temperature outside reached 110 degrees for 4 days. We had stored some empty bottles in a bin outside in the sun to be recycled later. After bottling I had Catarino take the empty bottles to recycle. To our surprise he found two cases of bottles that still had wine in them intact with the synthetic cork. That evening I tried the wine compared to the same wine I had stored in my cellar. I was amazed to find that after tasting the two wines blind, I could not tell the difference. I assumed the heat exposed wine would deteriorate after time so one year later I tried them again and found they still tasted the same. I have tried them again after 10 years and the heat exposed wines have not deteriorated anymore than the ones cellared at a constant temperature. We bottle early, we do not use extended maceration so Our wines can stand up to some heat and maybe be better. We are heading out for a short vacation. I have been enjoying the 2012 wines. I will open a few more tomorrow.
	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
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