August 11-
September 28, 2024 
I am still slowly getting better from my several Fractured bones. The bottom of my feet seem to be the biggest problem lately. Everytime I take a step, the pain is intense but not enough so I can't walk with my walkers. I know I have fractures on both big toes on each foot but both of them have had less pain recently so I am wondering why the bottom of my feet are in pain. I have some new diabetic sandals coming from Amazon tomorrow so I will try them out. For over 40 years I have been wearing Birkenstocks which have an arch so maybe since I have not been wearing shoes lately, my flat feet need shoes with arches to relieve the pain?
I have not been eating as much and also not consuming alcohol so my weight is down to 206 from being over 220 for 24 years. The alcohol alone was contributing 600 calories a day so that equates to a pound less a week. I know I was consuming on average over 2500 calories a day so hopefully I will lose some more pounds before I start adding more food and some alcohol. I would love to get down to 200 pounds and see what happens.
Thursday August 15, 2024
Good news! Harvest is near. Actually we are planning to harvest the Pinot Noir tomorrow and it will be a red wine and maybe the finished wine will be over 14% alcohol. Also we are close to harvesting our low alcohol DC Fusion which will be a mix of Petite Sirah, Sagrantino, and Grenache. The alcohol will be about 13%. Then late next week we should be close to harvesting our Chardonnay and we are aiming for 14% alcohol or a little higher and aged in French oak. There will be a little Riesling mixed in to the Chardonnay. Next week we are also planing to make a Viognier and a Gewurztraminer. They will be stored in stainless with an alcohol around 13.5%. There may be no Luminaire this year so those of you who have ordered the Luminaire, you may choose any of the wines above as a substitute.
Friday August 23, 2024
Pat has stepped in and advised me! I assume she wants to be a winemaker?? She wants higher alcohols in the whites so they sell better in the tasting room........SO this is Friday and we are now starting on the Sauvignon Blank. It seems to be over 25 sugar so maybe an alcohol of over 14.5%. The rest of our white wines have to wait because the sugar samples are still low.
We did pick the Pinot Noir on August 16 and the sugar game in at 26% so a potential alcohol of 15% and we are actually pressing the Pinot today. Yesterday we harvested one ton of Old Vine Zinfandel from our 3rd block and the sugar was about 25% but there are raisins so we assume we will have to add some water since we think the sugar will rise to well over 26%. We wanted to pick 6 more bins today but the temperature is still under 70 degrees at 10Am. We then will only pick one more ton and wait until Monday when the high for the day should be over 90 degrees. We need an average of over 70 degrees for our Malo-Lactic to go through in two days.
On Tuesday the 20th we did harvest our DC Fusion and the sugar was lower than we thought so we could have the same alcohol as last year, around 12.5%, that is fine since the wine is supposed to be a low alcohol wine which some of our customers prefer.
Below are the sugar samples taken to date..........
| Date | Grape | Area | Results | ||||
| 8/10 | Sat | SB | John | 19.5 | |||
| 8/12 | Mon | Pinot | Mix | 24.8 | |||
| 8/12 | Mon | Chard | New North | 18.5 | |||
| 8/12 | Mon | Chard | South | 20.6 | |||
| 8/12 | Mon | SB | Mix | 22.1 | |||
| 8/12 | Mon | Viognier | 18.7 | ||||
| 8/12 | Mon |
|
Mix | 21.7 | |||
| 8/13 | Tues | PS | Few |
|
|||
| 8/13 | Tues | Grenache | Few | 23.0 | DC Fusion, want 22 | ||
| 8/13 | Tues | Sag | Few | 20.7 | |||
| 8/14 | Wed | Pinot | North | 24.3 | |||
| 8/14 | Wed | Pinot | South | 27.1 | |||
| 8/15 | Thurs | SB | Mix | 22.4 | |||
| 8/15 | Thurs | Chard | South | 21.2 | |||
| 8/15 | Thurs | Gewurztraminer | Mix | 22.4 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | Sag | Creek |
|
|||
| 8/19 | Mon | Sag | Top | 21.6 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | PS | Creek | 19.4 | 22.0 | ||
| 8/19 | Mon | Grenache | Center | 24.7 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | Gewurztraminer | 22.2 | ||||
| 8/19 | Mon | SB | Mix | 24.3 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | Chard | New | 19.6 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | Chard | South | 21.7 | |||
| 8/19 | Mon | Sagrantino | Front One row | 22.1 | |||
| 8/21 | Wed | Zin 3 South | 8 Bunches | 25.7 | |||
| 8/21 | Wed | Zin 3rd | Full Sample | 24.1 | |||
| 8/21 | Wed | SB John | Good Sample | 23.9 | |||
| 8/23 | Fri | SB | Full Sample | 25.5 |
A lot has happened in the last week besides Harvest. Kate, my first born had a baby Boy on Monday! The boy was born at 34 weeks because of complications in the pregnancy. He and Kate are doing well but it was scary because of the emergency C-Section. We are very happy everything turned out well.
Harvest is on full swing. This last week we harvested the rest of the Old Vine Zin and then started on Block 4. We should be finished with Block 4 on Tuesday after the holiday. We then will harvest Viognier and Gewurztraminer. We had planned on about 13.5 alcohols on these Varietals but changed our minds and now looking for over 14%. As I said before we are not making our Luminaire this year and thus making several varietals including a Chardonnay with alcohol over 14.5%. Grenache will also be harvested next week and probably start on our Cabernet later in the week.
Thursday September 5, 2024
We have been harvesting all week. We are still waiting for the Chardonnay but all the other whites are in. Also all our Zinfandel is in including the Block 6 younger vines. That means we have plenty of Old Vine Zin which goes into our My Zin and Estate Cuvee and of course our 100% Old Vine Zinfandel. Our Old Vine Field Blend Block 4 is nearly finished fermenting. Also we picked our Grenache yesterday. Next week we should be harvesting our Cabernet and Carignan.
Monday September 16, 2024
Harvest has continued with all our Zinfandel in now. We also have all our whites in including our first Chardonnay in 100% new French Oak. We are still waiting for our Cabernet Sauvignon but did get in our Cabernet Franc. We will finish our Carignan tomorrow. The Sangiovese and Nebbiolo still needs another week along with our Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Aglianico, Peloursin and Petite Sirah. We are a little over half finished and the quality looks great as usual because we thin our crop to make sure the fruit is not over cropped.
Friday September 20, 2024
It is decision time! The days are getting shorter and the temps lately have gone down so we are waiting for the rest of the crop mentioned above to come in. In the mean time we have started harvesting our second crop which consists of bunches missed the first time and smaller bunches that bloomed later. But in what wines should we use these grapes? We do make a Dave's Cuvee but some of these grapes we are harvesting are from our old Zinfandel vines. Yesterday most of the fruit was from these old vines so we will use the fruit for our My Zin or Estate Cuvee. Today the fruit was from some old vines but also from Aglianico which vines have some virus so less ripe. We found yesterday the fruit from the old vines came in at very high sugar so today by mixing the Aglianico will bring the sugar level down SO these grapes today will go into our Dave's Cuvee which is a blend of many varieties of second crop. We only want to make about 200 cases of Dave's Cuvee so we have to figure out how to keep some of the fruit for our My Zin and Estate Cuvee which will be tricky to separate, BUT that is why I am here to make those decisions! It is Fun!
Thursday September 26, 2024
Below is a copy of the spreadsheet I use to document the grapes harvested in each year. It shows only this year so far but the tabs down below when active can go back 20+ years. It may be hard for some-of you to figure out but it should give you an idea of what we do each day.
Tuesday October One, 2024
We are into the last week of Harvest. We just finished harvesting our Petit Verdot and now working on our newly budded over Cabernet Sauvignon. That Cab will either go into our 100% Cabernet or many other wines, including Estate Cuvee, Aca Modot or The Ultimate Cuvee. Also on Thursday we will be harvesting two tons from an Alexander Valley Cabernet Vineyard that we are leasing. We will keep that wine separate to see what the quality is. Tomorrow we will finish out our Cab and also pick our Sangiovese and Nebbiolo. It will be even more fun for me after the end of Harvest when I start looking into all the barrels we have and then deciding where they go in all our wines for this 2024 vintage.
For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com
Home | Read | Diary | Tell Us What You Think of Our Diary | Last Week | Next Week