September 13 - September 19, 2015

	Sunday September 13, 2015 This is my diary so Pat says she does not like to read what I state, because I say too much. I should have not mentioned our trip to Santa Cruz so she says I give out too much information. I like stating what i am doing, I guess Pat is still concerned someone will know we are away SO WHAT. We have employees here everyday...........and more As some of you know there are Fires up North of us and we see the smoke............ The South wind is up now and it may push all the smoke, we feel and see, up North. It is also cooling off finally so we hope the people up North of us will be OK. So Pat and I are not good house hosts. We do not want to run a Bed And Breakfast. We have heard of several of our friends who enjoy guests staying for several days. We have a guest house and it has been for friends and relatives who help us during an event. The last few days is a change. We are still trying to be not great hosts but sometimes we need to welcome a good customer. So J said he was coming in for a visit. We agreed on a one night stay. He is so nice and his wife is so nice and we have a father and mother joining them and the father loves my wines and talks so much. I liked him very much but they are still here after 3 days. So do we ask them to leave? We have implied it and also said one more day but they are nice people and even brought in a new friend to stay last night, Look they are from the East coast. They had never been to San Francisco. We did not see them today, They had a good time without us, hopefully. 5 people staying in our guest house so I guess they know there is NFL football and I am suffering, Raiders were horrible....ssssssso it was nice they did not come over today...........tomorrow is another day Catarino and his great workers wanted to pick more today. There was little carignan. Carignan goes into Estate Cuvee and also into a varietal wine, we will make less of both of those wines. We had less Carignan So we went off and picked a little Petit Verdot and it came in at 26+ so we are good for the rest tomorrow. We will be harvesting through next Friday.......It is interesting to control all my passions right now. I like talking to customers for an hour or so, I like looking at tennis, I like seeing Giants games, I like football, I like making espresso, I love cooking and tasting wine and I love the stock market, I am sure I missed something, but I like making wine the most................. Monday September 14, 2015 In this business, I have to ready to make changes. I woke up this morning and there was a deep overcast and later it actually started to mist. There was no recorded rain but it was wet at times, even so much that I put some of our harvested Petit Verdot under cover in case it rained. There was a forecast for some sprinkles on Wednesday, now it looks like we may get some rain. A good rain could lower sugars. It is interesting this time of year because sugars can actually go down even with a slight cold spell of lower high temperatures. We don't know what will happen from year to year. SO we have decided to pick our clone 6 Cabernet and our Montepulciano which was scheduled for next Monday. The sugars may be a little lower than I want but we do not want to take the chance of a heavier rain than expected. And, the Tannat came in at 30 brix today, the Souzao at 27 and the Alvarelhao at 25 so they came in higher than I expected. Those varietals go into our Escuro blend but maybe the fruit tomorrow will come in at higher sugars than I expect. The clone 6 Cabernet will probably go into the My Zin or Aca Modot and the Montepulciano will go into our new Italiano wine. I expect about 24 sugar on both. Also today we harvested the rest of the Petit Verdot which looked great and also all our Mourvedre, both above 26 sugar. We have decided to wait to harvest our second crop which goes into Dave's Cuvee. If it is not too wet Wednesday we can start on that fruit. Catarino thinks it will take three days to pick the expected 3 tons. We could be done with everything by Friday!!! Tonight I have two NFL games to watch so it will be fun.............. Tuesday September 15, 2015 sweet 16's Bday So I will mention again, this is the date of our first Harvest. On September 15, 1979 we harvested the first grapes from this vineyard. I made amateur wine and it took a few years to perfect my style. So on September 15, 1979, 36 years ago and now my 37th Harvest, we hired Pickers and asked for friends to come and help and one of them was Karen. She was sweet 16, my first niece. At 16 she was one of the first to harvest this vineyard so a say Happy Birthday.......... Update: Our guests have gone off to new adventures and we had a nice time................We had pizza together This has been an adventure but it is over, so I hope I will survive, just kidding, yes we brought in the last of our First crop......We still have second crop to do but we might have to wait a week. There may be some rain coming in. Like I said we can't predict what will be........... The Montepulciano came in great at 25+ sugar..........The Clone 6 was another adventure. It took our great crew, 4 hours to pick 1.25 tons. We heard Jackson Family had pickers quit because they had to pick this clone 6 by the ton. There is little weight to this fruit.........It is about small bunches, smaller berries than peas and only maybe 20 berries per stem. We destemmed and was amazed, the destemmer did not work well.......we still had more stems into the fermenter than fruit. Josh and I were sprayed by big chunks of stems while the destemmer exploded out masses of matter. Josh and I loved the excitement. I got from 22 to 26 sugar on these clone 6 Cab masses. There are so many stems in the fermenter, it will be interesting to see what develops. There were a lot of raisins in the mass so I suspect we will have an alcohol over 14%........ Friday September 18, 2015 Like I said I will survive but I have to come down..............The first crop is over........ So we have Second crop on Monday I am trying to get ready for the second crop. I dread the last fruit to come in because, I will have to wait another 9 months, before Harvest next year. We pressed a lot of wine today and will do more on Monday. I gave everyone but Josh the days off..........Josh and I have to do analysis and add water when needed..........the Mourvedre was good this year.........it needed water............more tomorrow Saturday September 19, 2015 Yesterday we pressed our Cabernet clone 337 first. We got 7 barrels and 4 will go into our 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. The other 3 barrels will go into our Aca Modot, Estate Cuvee or My Zin. It looks like we will only be producing 100 cases of Cab this year. We then pressed our Aglianico and I think we got 8 barrels and two kegs. We will only be producing 50 cases of Aglianico, Lagrein and Petit Verdot. Some of the rest of the Aglianico will go into our new Italiano blend and the rest into our Escuro blend. On Monday we will be pressing more wine and our crew will start picking our second crop............ I have done some preliminary work on case totals for this year. We are making some Sparkling Pinot, a rose and a white blend and of course many red wines. It looks like we will be producing about 4200 cases this year. The red wines and potential totals are as such: 100% Old Vine Zinfandel, 375 cases; My Zin, 375 cases; Estate Cuvee, 325 cases; Block 4, 475 cases; Rai Zin, 125 cases; Aca Modot, 350 cases; Escuro 250 cases; Terre Melange, 275 cases; Carignan, 150 cases; Barbera, 75 cases; Petite Sirah, 300 cases; Grenache, 100 cases, Lagrein, 50 cases; Petite Verdot, 50 cases; Aglianico, 50 cases; Cabernet, 100 cases; Pinot, 100 cases; The Ultimate Cuvee, 100 cases; and our new Italiano, 150 cases. From 4 gallons per barrel of all those wines we will be producing about 100 cases of Zp2c. Next week we will pick second crop so we may have about 200 cases of Dave's Cuvee. Also you might remember on July 28, we harvested some Petite Sirah and Zinfandel at low sugar and combined it with 2010 wines and some 2014 Zp2c. That wine is only 13.25 alcohol, about 200 cases and will be sold as non vintage Dave's Cuvee. The wine will be sold for $99 a case.
	For any comments or questions I encourage any of you to e-mail.....david@coffaro.com Dave
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