November 4 - November 10, 2012

	Monday November 5, 2012  9:00 Pm: My Father, Francis, but went by Frank.............my middle name...............died on November 5, 1953.....I am still trying to forget.............. Every Harvest is Hard. Last year you could go back and see in the diary if you want........ my Mother was in poor health. This year The Harvest has been Hard as usual. We brought in 125 tons a new record for this winery......but most important, we did only 56 tons last year. It has been a dream at times, an adventure. I am looking at the last of our Estate grapes tonight. Matt let me fill one of the last few barrels. I can't believe, even the second crop pressed tonight looks incredibly dark and concentrated. It will be fun to blend these............................. Ok, you know if you have read this diary in the last year or so...........I like carbonated water......Right now, I made up an interesting combination of orange and almond extract into a one liter bottle of sparkling water. Seltzer is not intense enough for me......so I have purchased a SodaStream. It does what I want by intensifying the water. I love it!! The stock is down big today!! They have competition..........long story....look up SODA if interested....... Wednesday November 7, 2012 We are all shaped in some way by the way we are brought up. I saw my Father be friendly to minorities when he brought a few home from work. I saw all my relatives support the Democratic party with blind faith. I was skeptical and have voted Republican a few times in the past. I can assure you..........my Mother still votes for only Democrats. I have heard several people today or especially in the recent past, ask why anyone would vote for Romney. Gee, almost 60% of the white people voted for Romney. It will be a long road back.....why can't we get along.........why can't we understated each other? Obama won, let's get together!!!...........Compromise is not a bad word.....I do it many times a day.......... 8:30 Pm: I opened 16 month versions of 2010 wines tonight. The RaiZin was the most important one i wanted to taste again, probably because we have had many different comments about this wine. Go back in the diary if you want to.......back to September 2010. RaiZin was a challenge and it has been controversial from day one. I harvested 2.5 tons of solid Zinfandel Raisins and rehydrate to make a unique wine. Tonight I thought the RaiZin was what I expected. If you swirl any of my 2010 wines you will get more intensity than any of my other wines. If you sip slowly they will be easier to digest. Like I said 2010 wines are very intense if you swirl around but even more so..........if you take a small amount in your mouth and drive it up to the top of your mouth quickly, it is strong. Pat does not like that method of tasting. I find 2010 RaiZin still way to astringent. As most of you know I usually like astringent wines, like 2010 Petite Sirah, 2010 Lagrein, 2010 Cab, But especially Petit Verdot from 2010................BUT The Zin based wines from 2010 are different from what I have produced in the past. I actually preferred the RaiZin to most of the 4 zins opened tonight but all are an adventure. Saturday November 10, 2012 Some of you have heard that Amazon.com has started selling wine. We could sign up with Amazon and we would be responsible for getting the wine to our customers, just like we do now. The exposure would be great, but not the costs to us. As some of you know we do not have distributors in any State in the nation. We also do not sell to retailers or restaurants. Of course it would be easier for us to sell to more people if we had distributors, or retailers selling our wine, including Amazon, but our costs would be higher. We are happy selling our wine directly to customers because they obtain the wine at a reasonable cost. Distributors want from us about a 50% discount and retailers want 30%. From what I can figure from what Amazon has told us, they would receive over 30% in fees from us. That would mean our customers would pay more for our wine unless we took far less in profit. Sure, we could do more in volume, but would it be fair for those new customers to pay more and customers who went directly to us would pay far less? Fortunately our sales are fine now so we will not be selling through Amazon. My back is no better so I have decided to cancel my right knee surgery which was scheduled for December 5. At this time I do not need more pain. Actually my right knee has given me no trouble all the way through Harvest. It did act up for a few days, back a few months ago when I exercised on my stationary bike so I thought at that time it was a good idea to go through with the right knee surgery. I have full motion with my new left knee so I am happy now. I may still have the operation on my right knee in May. I need a vacation, it is near............
	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
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