Week 46
November 12 to November 18, 2000 

	Tuesday November 14
	I'm still glued to the presidential race, but also working on the blending schedule for our 2000 wines that will occur in the first week of January. I've already finished deciding on the barrels that will be used for our Aca Modot, Neighbors' Zin and Petite Sirah. By the end of the week I should have some pretty solid numbers for the percentages on all the wines. We just finished pressing our late harvest Sauv Blanc. We have about 25 gals to ferment which should yield over 200 half bottles. We have already sold about 50 bottles to some of you that have read my diary posting last week that mentioned that I was offering the wine at $15 per half bottle. I will sell up to 200 bottles until the end of the fermentation. Wednesday November 15 I pressed  the cabernet yesterday, that I received from Phil Jones last week. I must thank Phil for the grapes, but since the rain had deteriorated their quality, it has been a challenge to produce a quality wine. Also Brendan and I did not communicate completely and ultimately made a mistake by adding twice the amount of So2. Brendan has had other obligations in the last week and I have not communicated completely because of our lack of time together. This is scary, I'm almost sounding like a politician!! I have to be honest::: We screwed up!!! Can the wine be saved? Yes!! Will the quality be good? Probably yes. Will it be up to the quality of what I want for our winery? Questionable!! I almost wanted to dump the wine out last night after tasting it for the first time after fermentation, but after contemplating and realizing I could be discarding wine worth $35,000, I feel I must not be too harsh at this time. I can promise you that I will not use this wine unless it is up to my standards. I must like this wine. I have my doubts at this time, but like last year, it is amazing how some wines can improve with a little time. I ended up with 40% sugar on the late harvest sauv blanc. That should yield an alcohol of 12% and a residual sugar of close to 20%. I just added the yeast and expect the fermentation to continue for over a month. We will probably bottle the wine with our dry sauv blanc in February.  Thursday November 16 I'm sure some of you are wondering why we have not processed some of your recent orders with your credit cards. Well the reason is that Pat and I have been so busy with shipments and winemaking that we have had little time for anything else. We are starting to realize that we can not do all this "Futures" work by our self unless we make small changes in our policy----We really don't want to keep credit cards on file. Expirations elapse and cards are changed. Also we receive orders with the last 4 digits for cards but we do not have these new cards on file. Do we use the one on file or do we take the time to call or e-mail? We don't have the time to look up all these credit cards and confirm that they are still the right ones.  From now on we would like to change our policy for sales. We would like to offer a 3% discount for any orders placed with a check or we would still like to take your credit cards, but only if you would insert the whole number in your e-mail or on-line orders. You are also still welcome to mail in your past or new credit card numbers. We are sorry, but if we continue to take the time to look up past credit cards, we will have to hire another employee and then raise our prices. As some of you know, I have enough trouble getting along with Brendan and Pat, let alone a new employee.  I have confirmed by e-mail many orders for our 2000 late harvest sauv blanc, but have received very few credit card #s. Please either mail in a check for $14.55 a bottle (3%discount) plus 7.5% sales tax if applicable or supply your full credit card number for $15 per bottle.
	Dave
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